What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger
by Dianne
Summary: Gus's good intentions to cheer Shawn up by taking him to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in L.A. after his break up and the horrors from his ordeal with Yin go very wrong as Yin tests the theory that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger - or not... Takes place three weeks after the events of Mr. Yin Presents. Full cast
1. Chapter 1

A/N This story takes place three weeks after the events in the episode entitled Mr. Yin Presents. It is canon until that point. To refresh your canon in case it's been awhile since you've seen the show, Abigail broke up with Shawn in this episode after Yin kidnapped she and Juliet and Yin made Shawn choose between them as to which he could save. Fortunately, Juliet is saved from being tied high above the clock tower and Abigail is saved from under the pier. Shawn gave up his chance to pursue Yin when he saw him escaping from the pier in order to save Abigail so Yin walked free. Buzz McNabb was attacked and knocked out by Yin at the airport where he was sent to protect Abigail. For the sake of this story, the characters are already aware that Yin and Yang have been interested in Shawn since his childhood, Yang is locked in a secure mental health facility and Juliet does not know Shawn's secret. This story is completely written and so will not fail to update on a regular basis until it is fully posted. And now, on with the story, with sincere thanks to everyone involved with the Psych show for letting amateur writers write fanfiction based on the show. No copyright infringement intended and no profits being made other than fun.

XXXXXXXXX

Fake psychic detective, Shawn Spencer half-heartedly listened to his best friend, Gus gush over how lifelike the wax figure of Val-Kilmer-as-Batman looked as they perused Madame Tussaud's in Hollywood. The argument over finances on the two-hour drive from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles had soured Shawn's mood. Having to dump his delicious pineapple smoothie at the entrance to the wax museum because of a no-food-or-drink policy had served to irritate him even more.

"Come on, Shawn, I'll buy you another smoothie, served in a real pineapple and you can drink it while standing on The Mentalist's star on the walk of fame," Gus prodded as the pair made their way around the Western-themed gallery full of fake tumbleweeds and abandoned wagon wheels.

The Mentalist doesn't have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame, Gus," Shawn complained as he stuck his finger up Trigger the horse's nostril. The disapproving eyes of The Lone Ranger stared down at him as if the paraffin man were alive and as annoyed at Shawn as Detective Lassiter had ever been during one of Shawn's crime-solving _visions_ back at the police station. "But he should."

"You know that's right," Gus said brightly, having distracted Shawn from their earlier arguments.

"And besides, you saw those sidewalk stars," Shawn said, wrinkling his forehead in disgust. "Gum and dirt all over them. Hollywood is not as advertised, man. Sure, they clean it up for the red carpets and abduction ceremonies but on any given, say, Tuesday... "

"It's _induction_ ceremonies, _not_ abduction ceremonies. Shawn," Gus said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "And it's Thursday." _And that would be why our electricity was cut off, the final warning bill was due on Tuesday._

I've heard it both ways," Shawn continued as though a date on a calendar could be changed on a whim. He didn't want to admit that Tussaud's was creeping him out. It was like being in a crime lab where the forensics people in the sub-basement of a police department pieced murder victims back together for identification purposes from nothing but eyeless sockets in bleached white skulls; no matter how great the artist, the eyes were always dead.

"Shawn, selfie with me," Gus said enthusiastically as he put his arm around Liberace who sat at a grand piano with an outrageous set of pearly whites in his mouth to match the ivories he was tickling with his perfectly manicured, ringed fingers. And though his eyes had a friendly set of laugh lines around them, the frames didn't match the reality, they were as dead as all the others.

Shawn stepped into the frame of Gus' cell phone but didn't actually touch the sequined nightmare as Gus instructed him to say cheese. He hadn't gotten a look at Yin three weeks ago when he'd come face to mask with him on the pier the night Yin kidnapped Abigail and Juliet but he was sure that if he had, the eyes beneath that mask would be as dead as the waxen figures staring sightlessly all around him.

Shawn swore time and time again that he didn't need to talk to anyone about what Yin had done to him, to everyone he loved, even when Juliet admitted that she was seeing the department psychiatrist. Shawn shook his head. They were headed toward The Hall of Horrors where all one had to do to escape from a crazed killer was turn off the television or merely watch the movie clips between protective fingers placed strategically over the face so as not to witness the carnage with a full field of vision. Bring it on.

As Gus walked and posted his pictures, the two turned a corner and ran into Jason Voorhees. Shawn whooped in joy and whipped out a hockey mask seemingly from nowhere. Donning the mask, he stepped up to the Friday The Thirteenth figure and posed proudly.

"Selfie, Gus?" Shawn invited in a perfect voice from the nights he and Gus had spent watching marathons of the horror sequels on VHS as teenagers.

"Look, Barbara Streisand," Gus said striding away from Shawn who had just produced a clawed glove to pose in front of Freddy Krueger. _Why didn't you just hide your smoothie in your Hermione Granger bag, Shawn, where did you have all that stuff? _

"Me-em-oooories, like the corners of my mind," Shawn sang in a creepy voice, sneaking up on Gus from behind as he posed with Babs, pretending to admire her dress. He waved the long-fingered, gloved hand in front of the famous singer's frozen features just like he had done during his and Gus's visit to England to one of the guards in front of Buckingham Palace. His theatrical _psychic reading_ had broken the poor officer. It was a rare occurrence but then again, Shawn Spencer was no amateur. He vaguely wondered if the guard had recovered from his nervous breakdown. Once the authorities had interviewed Shawn, the officer was of course pardoned for his lapse of control and rumor had it that he had even been visited by the Queen herself at the mental health facility.

…And speaking of the Queen, down yet another corridor, this one adorned with red carpets and an elaborate carriage pulled by yet another wax horse, was the entire royal family.

Don't stare at Liz's profile, Gus, if it's the same one from the old paper money in Canada we saw when we were chasing Despereaux in Vancouver, we'll see Satan in her hair."

"What are you talking about, Shawn?" Gus dismissed as he took in the profile, gave a small shriek and strode quickly from the royal alcove with an awkward half curtsey, half bow.

"Whoever was working at the mint when they let that slip by, needs Jesus," Gus whispered.

Shawn silently agreed as he slipped the hockey mask over Prince Charles' face and the Freddy Krueger hands over the Queen's white-gloved appendages.

"That's for Diana," Shawn whispered though he had no real ill feelings for the royals as such. Problems and feeling like an outsider were just something he could relate to on some level.

Shawn was done being in a place where soulless eyes watched you everywhere you went. Maybe it was because he was hyper-observant, but did David Hasselhoff just wink at him? Shawn shook his fist at the fake lifeguard and caught up with Gus who was currently hugging Donkey from Shrek. _I'm not a real lifeguard but I play one on TV, _Shawn mimicked as he ran seemingly in slow motion.

"What do you say we head over to Ripley's now?" Shawn said hopefully as he began to feel like he was about to be kidnapped and become one of the has-been figures who had a slight build up of dust on their disused shoulders. What he'd thought about dead eyes, now he could only wish. Now it felt as if he was being watched by every set of magnificently crafted glass orbs. And where were the crowds? Shawn and Gus currently occupied the animation gallery alone.

"Oh. My. Gosh!" Gus hissed as he pushed Shawn to his left to avoid the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Shawn's fear of pointy things ramped up and he pushed Gus back to the right upon spying the pointy tails_. The better to stab you with, my dear, _thought Shawn mixing Little Red Riding Hood and the horrors of carnivorous, grandparent-eating wolves into the nightmare that was The Wizard of Oz. He looked down at his feet, nope, Sandals were _not_ ruby slippers, although right now, the prospect that there was no place like home, was upon him.

"Gus, did you ever notice that when they colorize old black and white movies, they forget to do the inside of their mouths so that when they talk, the people look like corpses?

"Why did you have to bring that up now, Shawn?" Gus fretted, staring at the wax figure of Dorothy in a tearful pose with Toto in her arms about to sing. Gus' bottom lip quivered.

"Gus, don't be a generic paper towel in a Bounty commercial," Shawn scolded.

"I can't help it, Shawn, you know I'm a sympathetic crier."

As they passed the Wizard of Oz, the Polar Express display came into view.

"And they call The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a horror movie," Shawn scoffed. If animated Tom Hanks looked any more like a zombie they'd have cast him in The Walking Dead."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Back in Santa Barbara, Carlton Lassiter, Head Detective of the police department leaned back in his chair and peered over the mountain of paperwork on his desk when he heard a new junior detective telling someone in a bored sort of voice that they needed to wait forty-eight hours before they could report someone missing.

Curious and needing to stretch his long legs anyway, Carlton stood up. A young woman in nurse's scrubs stood sobbing quietly into a tissue before a desk a few rows up.

"No, I don't know how long Buzz has been missing. You see I went to my mother's house because we were fighting and when I came back three days later for work and because he wouldn't pick up his phone to talk to me, he wasn't there. So, I came here to find out if he'd taken extra shifts or something. Buzz always calls me after a few hours. This is the longest fight we've ever had."

"Francie?" Juliet O'Hara asked, standing up from behind her own mound of paperwork. Juliet had chosen desk duty over fieldwork since the Yin kidnapping and would soon be transferring to city hall.

Juliet stepped around her desk and gave the much shorter, auburn-haired woman a brief hug to which Lassiter rolled his eyes.

Lassiter sat back down. O'Hara could talk to Buzz's wife about her husband's whereabouts. The buffoon was probably picking up extra shifts pulling security detail at private events and stadiums. Why people brought their private lives to work, Lassiter couldn't fathom.

"Drake," Juliet said in a scolding tone to the attending officer. "I'll take it from here. Francie, why don't you come with me?"

Juliet walked toward Chief Vick's office. Vick wasn't currently visible and she rarely locked her office while she was in the building so Juliet sought privacy there. As she opened the door, she ran her hand over her face searching for stray locks of blonde hair that were irritating her but they weren't there, hadn't been since she started tying her hair up and dying it a darker shade to match her mood since she's faced her own mortality on the clock tower at the hands of Yin.

"Have a seat, Francie," Juliet offered, gesturing to the seat across from Chief Vick's. Juliet remained standing. Shawn might sit nonchalantly in the Chief's chair but Juliet had too much respect for the first female Chief of the Santa Barbara Department. "Now what's this about Buzz being missing? He's not due in to work until night shift tonight so no one here's noticed anything unusual."

"Oh, Juliet, Buzz and I have had an awful fight," Francie sobbed louder now that she had some semblance of privacy and a sympathetic ear. Francie didn't know Juliet well but she and the other detectives had attended her and Buzz's wedding.

"What makes you think he's missing, Francie?" Juliet asked kindly, getting right to the point.

"When I went home to mother after Buzz and I had been fighting for what seemed like a week, I was sure he'd come to his senses and come after me. But … but …"

"Have you talked to him at all?" O'Hara asked, not willing to officially take a statement from Francie just yet. Protocol had to be followed and it wasn't unusual for relatively newlyweds to fight what with merging households, pets, finances and the twenty-four-seven in your face time together … _that might be good with a man like Shawn._

"I don't even remember what the fight was about," Francine sniffled. "One minute I was talking about buying a new crockpot because it was the one thing we didn't get for a present for the wedding and the next Buzz … well … he's never done this before, I don't want you to get the wrong idea of my Buzzy, but … he – ah, he…"

Juliet wanted to put her hands over her ears. Francine sounded deadly serious and scared. The detective did not want to hear that the friendly, wonderfully-sensitive-to-other-people's-feelings Buzz McNab could put his hands on his wife. The young officer had lost a toe and an eyebrow and was in considerable pain when he offered to limp on crutches to get Shawn a glass of water just because he noticed that Shawn's voice was a little hoarse.

"… he yelled at me," Francine finally whispered from behind hands over her face as if she'd outed a murderer. "Buzz never yells. He just doesn't. It was just a crockpot. I asked him what was wrong. I admit that I – yelled at him too," Francine admitted sheepishly. "Told him that I worked too and if I wanted a new crock pot, well I was – damned well going to get one. I don't normally swear, detective, I swear – I mean you know what I mean, but I was so mad. And Buzz wouldn't tell me why he didn't want me to spend any money."

Bingo. It was about money. Buzz was probably licking his wounds because Francie made more money than he made as a constable at her job as an O.R. nurse.

"Okay, Francine, other than Buzz not being home when you came back from your mother's house, and not picking up the phone, why do you think he's missing?

"Because Buzz is one of the sweetest men in the world," Francine said as if that explained everything.

Juliet couldn't disagree but she couldn't justify starting a missing person's report. Francie didn't know how long Buzz had been gone from their home, she hadn't been there and it was Buzz's right to not pick up a phone. Juliet had forgotten her phone on her desk so she picked up Vick's landline and dialed Buzz's number. Knowing the number by heart confirmed just how much the young constable was called upon for duties with she and Lassiter. The call went to a full voice mailbox.

"Sorry, that would be me," Francine apologized. "I called him all night last night."

Buzz always picked up when someone from the department called him, on duty or off. Now Juliet was beginning to worry as well but that didn't change the fact that most evidence pointed to Buzz simply taking some time to lick his wounds. Until he didn't report for duty at seven o'clock, when Juliet would be allowed to officially worry, there was nothing the department could do, and even then, the night shift head could only call Officer McNab with a verbal warning for dereliction of duty if Buzz failed to call in sick or give a plausible excuse for his absence.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was a credit to both Buzz McNab and Chief Vick when the chief heard about Francine and Buzz's troubles that she stayed late after her five o'clock shift ending, making excuses about paperwork and phone calls to make and visiting mothers-in-law that she wanted to avoid at home.

At six o'clock it was well passed a respectful time to be calling in sick for a seven o'clock shift. At six-fifteen the clock on the wall would become self-conscious from all eyes being on it if it wasn't inanimate. At six thirty, everyone knew. Buzz McNab was always early; he put on the fresh coffee, day or night shift and was always first at briefing.

Seven o'clock. A gong might as well have gone off. Even Chief Vick held her breath as the night shift head called the absent Buzz McNab. The officer hung up with an air of anger and grabbed a report paper as he dialed a replacement.

Vick told Francine to call every one of Buzz's friends, his parents, relatives and anyone she could think of as she took Juliet aside.

"O'Hara, since you're still here, why don't you look up that hotel Buzz was doing door duty for?"

As Juliet sat at her desk, she noticed a steaming cup of coffee on Lassiter's desk. Lassiter didn't share a desk. With anyone. She turned around to see who was foolish enough to touch the touchy head detective's desk after hours when the man himself walked in carrying three sandwiches from the food stand just outside the station.

"Lassiter, I didn't know you cared," O'Hara said as Carlton tossed a whole wheat, egg salad to her, followed by a corned beef with instructions to give that one to the Chief.

"I don't, but as you can see, I'm almost done my paperwork. Unlike you, I can go home this weekend and plan for the fifty-fourth annual civil war re-enactment."

"But you're still here," Juliet smiled.

"Well, I called the station baseball league members as well to see if any of them wanted to join me on the battlefield, no takers – and uh, no one's seen Buzz either."

Carlton had already called over half of O'Hara's list and still no Buzz.

"And I called around to those hotels, you know, cheap ones that Buzz has worked at to find rooms for out of town guests at the re-enactment. No discount for knowing one of their employees, Buzz hadn't been there for months." Lassister's attempt to look nonchalant failed.

"Thanks, Carlton," Juliet said quietly. "I'll tell the chief."

"Thanks for what O'Hara, he's still technically not missing," Lassiter said with a hint of anger at the system.

"Well, am I the chief or not," said Vick as O'Hara informed her that all of Buzz's contacts had been contacted. "With everything that's been going on with Yin and the kidnappings…"

Juliet let out a small gasp.

"I'm going to make an exception. No one really knows how long Buzz has been missing or if he even is missing but I think we need to air on the side of caution. O'Hara, see if Lassiter wants to stop by McNabb's place with Francine and go over some of his belongings to see if he might have packed anything or left any clues as to where he may have gone, voluntarily or not."

Lassiter already had his keys and a half-eaten sandwich in his hand as he walked toward the doors of the police station and Juliet followed him.

"If McNabb is playing hooky for a broken heart, so help me he'll be walking the beat until he's old and grey," Lassiter muttered. "We aren't running a daycare or marriage counseling."

XXXXXXXXXXX

At home, Francine took a deep breath and opened the door. She gave a small yelp as their cat, who usually came running to greet them, gave a pitiful meow, got up to come over and fell over gasping for air.

"Chester!" Francine cried as she rushed to the cat's side. "She can't breathe!"

Lassiter and Juliet exchanged glances. They couldn't call an ambulance. It was a cat and Francine was clearly in no state to drive. Lassiter cussed loudly as he picked up the cat with surprising gentleness. "I'll take – the little boy cat here to the vet. You and O'Hara go through your husband's things and see if anything seems off."

Without waiting to find out what vet the McNabb's used, Lassiter left the building. What was his career coming to – puppies like McNabb and kittens. Oh yes, Buzz was going to get an earful alright for worrying them all like this. How dare he when Juliet was planning to transfer out of stress from the kidnapping that Lassiter still felt guilty about, Spencer had all but quit taking cases for the department, and damn if that wasn't on the negative side now much to his annoyance. And Yin was still out there. But Lassie wasn't worried. Nope, not him.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Gus chanced sideways glances at his friend throughout the winding, wide corridors of the dark museum. Shawn caught him every time, probably even knew exactly what Gus was thinking. It was one of the disadvantages of having a hyper-observant friend.

"Gus, stop. I'm fine."

"If the bags under your eyes were Prada, we'd be rich," Gus said quietly.

"But my hair is magnificent, Gus, it doesn't get all squashed down when I don't sl-"

"I knew it," Gus said sadly, and for Shawn to screw up admitting not having slept, it meant that he hadn't slept in at least three days.

"You're still worried?"

"Gus don't be a -" Shawn started.

"Don't, Shawn, you can talk about it you know. I'm your best friend, man, you should be able to talk to me."

"No, I'm not worried - because Abigail broke up with me and now I know that even if I like Juliet, I have to let her be. If I just leave her alone, she'll be alright, Abby'll be alright too, so yeah, I'm worried." _That I'm going to be alone._

"We are going to catch Yin, Shawn, you know that, right?"

"Yes, but at what cost? It's not just Abby and Jules, there was that waitress…"

Gus closed his eyes. _Don't say it. Don't say it. Please don't say it._

"I mean, if I take myself out of the equation, you know, get outta Dodge for awhile…"

Gus didn't know whether to lie or tell the truth. He chose the truth.

"This whole thing started when you were a kid, Shawn, if you went away, it'd be here when you got back..."

Shawn gave an ironic smile.

"No. Just, no," Gus said firmly, shoving Shawn down onto a velveteen chaise lounge next to Scarlett O'Hara.

Clark Gable's chin rested in his hand as he took in the odd tableau unfolding beneath the curtains that would soon become his lover's dress under the backdrop of artificial sunlight peering through the window obtrusively. If Gus didn't do or say something soon, his friend would be like the movie title, Gone With The Wind – in his hair – on his motorcycle that his dad hated so very much.

"Okay, let's say for a second you really could disappear. Eventually, Yin will move on. And the next player he chooses won't have your gifts. We may have lost people but we haven't lost."

"Gifts?" Shawn said with more derision than he'd intended. "Yeah, it's great to remember _exactly _how Yin made me choose between Jules and Abigail." Shawn pinched the bridge of his nose and spared Gus more anger as he just breathed and tried to think of something to make Gus understand. "I can still smell Yin's breath, he had expensive Niagara ice wine to celebrate his intended victory. It was cold that night. I could literally see his breath and I wanted to reach inside him and pull it out and dangle it in front of him as he starved for it. I didn't just want him to die. I wanted him to suffer, Gus. But I couldn't do it because then two people would die. But if I had, it would have been over. I sacrificed God knows how many to save two. It wasn't just about Abby and Jules, it wasn't just about my dad, Buzz, Lassieface and … you. I left him alive because I was selfish. I didn't want to lose Abby or Jules and even though Abby told me she didn't want to die, she couldn't stay with me, I know she and Jules would have sacrificed themselves if they knew that now, so many others are going to pay for their lives. And I still can't say it was a mistake. I'm that selfish."

"You could have died saving Abby under the pier, Shawn. The paramedics wanted you to go to the hospital you'd taken in so much water. You're not selfish. You made the only decision you could. Have you ever thought that maybe it will be Jules who arrests Yin and that if you'd let her die, he'd be killing for the next twenty years? Have you ever thought that if you hadn't saved Abby, some kid that she teaches wouldn't grow up to cure cancer and save many more lives than Yin could ever take? Fate isn't perfect but…"

And somewhere from nearby a bodiless, indignant cough sounded. The two men looked at each other to confirm that they'd both heard it.

"As God is my witness, Gus, we're outta here," Shawn said in a perfect, high pitched southern accent, his hand sticking a bit to the top of Scarlett's wig. "Sorry, we didn't get our money's worth out of it."

"Frankly, Shawn, I don't give a damn," Gus said as they scrambled out of the wax museum exit only to bowl into a mime outside. The mime grabbed Shawn's midsection trying to stay upright and the two twisted, the mime falling onto Shawn's prone body. The mime then proceeded to mimic struggling to get up off the winded psychic with no real effort.

"Get off me, man!" Shawn gasped as Gus righted himself and pulled the mime off of him. Shawn stared up into the sunlight through closed eyes and when he opened them, his retinas were filled with round, white orbs as if he'd just walked one of the red carpets of camera flashing paparazzi who were setting up across the street from where they now stood.

The mime, with his white face makeup and his black hat and stupid water-squirting flower, fell out of character and disappeared into the crowd. With so many in line for Tussauds, Gus and Shawn were at a loss to explain how they'd spent most of their time in there alone. Shawn turned to look in the windows where the ticket taker stood looking irritated by the impatient tourists who were asking what was taking so long to gain entry.

"Shawn, you alright?" Gus said as Shawn paled, making the bags under his eyes more prominent.

"Y – yeah, just shouldn't have looked up in the sun for so long, it's playing with my eyes."

Gus debated calling it a day but then again, he hadn't convinced Shawn to stay in Santa Barbara and fight yet. For Shawn's part, it appeared that the detective was done talking for now.

"Let's get that smoothie and something to eat," Gus suggested.

When the two men reached the food truck with the gigantic pineapple on top, Gus was dismayed when Shawn failed to take out his phone to snap a shot of his favorite fruit. Normally Shawn would have been almost arrested for climbing the truck and posing next to it or he'd charm the owner to let him drive it and even serve food. Shawn ordered a smoothie. Gus ordered a chicken vegetable wrap for him along with his own food and drink.

As Gus and Shawn sat at a picnic table under a white canopy, Gus tried to push his delicious looking French fries closer to Shawn to entice him with the aroma. Things were bad when Shawn didn't eat at least half of Gus' fries…

"Shawn you didn't eat breakfast," Gus said, trying to sound casual but failing miserably. "And you've hardly had a bite of your wrap. I'm eating alone."

"I'm not a sympathetic eater, Gus." Shawn tried to smile but it didn't reach his eyes.

Shawn hadn't lost weight but his cheeks were a tad hollower somehow. Just for Gus he ate half of his wrap.

"Hey, a little girl cat," Shawn said as a calico slipped around the edge of one of the buildings. The owner of the food truck tossed a chunk of loose chicken to her and she dragged it away in her teeth. Shawn strategically placed his half wrap in between the buildings for the cat as well, it still had lots of chicken in it.

"How do you know it was a little girl cat?" Gus queried. "You only saw its face."

"Most calico cats are female, Gus, it's a scientific fact."

"Oh." Things were bad if Shawn quoted science instead of observation. Normally he would have said, it was the way the cat walked like a girl or meowed like a girl cat or some other absurdity. He just didn't seem to have the energy.

Shawn pretended to cheer up just a bit for Gus' sake. After all, this day would be the last time the fake psychic detective would see his best friend. Gus might have been right about Shawn not running away completely but that didn't mean that Shawn was going to chance continuing to work with Gus or being near him or anyone else he cared about. He had to focus on Yin alone and if that meant staging a huge fight with Gus in order to establish a boundary, so be it. His feet felt like lead as Gus dragged him down the street toward Ripley's.

But Shawn couldn't do it. He didn't want his last words to Gus to be a lie. He knew that leaving impulsively from Los Angeles without so much as having packed a bag back in Santa Barbara was wrong, that Gus would worry, but a worried Gus was better than a dead Gus.

Shawn smiled, sometimes genuinely, most times not as Gus shot pictures of the two of them together in front of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. He and Shawn climbed into a barrel that had gone over Niagara Falls but it only made bile rise in Shawn's throat as he thought of Niagara ice wine on Yin's breath the night everything had gone so very wrong. And worse, Yin had somehow known that Shawn knew the aroma of Niagara ice wine from a bottle that Despereaux had sent him, Yin had invaded every aspect of Shawn's life from intimate friends to distant frenemies.

"Gus, I need to use the little boy's room," Shawn stated.

When Gus followed Shawn into the restroom, Shawn ducked into a stall telling Gus not to be a sympathetic pee-er. Shawn just stood there, not really in need of a restroom. He rested his head on the back of the questionably clean stall door until the sound of running water, double soaping, and air dryer sound diminished.

"Why don't you go on out and look around nearby and I'll be out in a minute," Shawn said in a gross, strained sort of way.

Gus wrinkled his nose and headed to the doors.

Shawn waited for the ten seconds it would take for Gus to become enthralled at a display of some medieval medicine bottles or something, peeked out of the bathroom doors and slipped out in the opposite direction from which Gus had gone. As he walked, he counted the scant cash he'd managed to pickpocket from Gus and Gus' company credit card and phone and stashed it in his pocket. He had no phone, hadn't paid the bill in a month.

"Goodbye, Gus," Shawn whispered as he slipped out into the sunlight once more.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Damn you, Shawn!" Gus hissed as he felt in his pocket to find a crumpled-up napkin with a few words scrawled from Shawn in ketchup.

"Tell everyone goodbye. I'm okay. I just can't…"

Gus did everything he could think of. He even reported Shawn as a missing child and got mad at the Ripley's security guard who refused to repeat the announcement after he found out that Shawn was a full-grown man.

"Not on my watch, Shawn. Not again," Gus vowed, pulling out his personal phone only to have it ring before he could begin to call Henry and Juliet.

"Burton Guster, here," Gus said impatiently, not having checked the caller ID out of sheer frustration.

"Mr. Guster, it's Chief Vick, is Mr. Spencer with you? His phone was disconnected when I tried to call. I need both of you to come to the station right away, we have an incident."

Gus sighed. "I'm sorry, Chief, I've had an incident, too."

"Look, Mr. Guster, whatever you and Spencer have gotten yourselves into, get yourself out, you have a job to do that just might get the lights back on at Psych."

This case, whatever it was, must have been high priority for the chief to sound so frazzled and offering pay even before examining whether Shawn had any "visions" to start them off toward resolution.

"With all due respect, Chief," Gus said, his voice cracking, "Shawn's gone. He ran. I thought I had him convinced that we're stronger together as a team but…"

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"I see," said Chief Vick, regaining her voice with a resolve that Gus could admire. After all, acceptance of refusal for casework was mandatory; Shawn was never under arrest for anything, he wasn't a full-time employee of the department, he was a victim; if he wanted to run away, there was nothing anyone could do legally to stop him. Though at the moment, she would have had some choice words for her favorite and only psychic detective.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Guster. Where are you?" Vick asked as a loud busker stalked past Gus who'd by now been in his way out front of Ripley's for over five minutes asking anyone if they'd seen which direction Shawn had gone by description alone. _Shawn would've remembered exactly what I'd been wearing today _Gus lamented as all he could say to passers-by was Shawn's height and hair color and how fabulous and full of life the locks were.

"Los Angeles, Chief. I brought Shawn here to try and cheer him up. He's been working all hours ever since the kidnappings, even with the bronchitis he had after swallowing too much water under the pier. He just gave me the slip." Gus failed to tell the chief about Shawn's theft. It was going to be hard enough to explain non-work-related purchases made two hours or more from Gus' doctor office routes. The pharmaceutical salesman was well and truly screwed once his boss started receiving the invoices from whatever Shawn purchased.

"Look, Chief Vick, Shawn can't have gotten far yet, why don't you tell me what the case is and if I can find him, it might convince him to come home for a bit." _Before I kill him for trying to do this alone._

Chief Vick was going to refuse. After all, Gus didn't need to know about the case and she really needed to focus and organize her department. But now the station was missing not one but two of its own.

"Gus – Mr. Guster," Vick corrected sounding suddenly very tired. "Officer McNabb is missing."


	2. Chapter 2

Gus stood outside of Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, clearly choosing to _believe-it-not_ that his best friend was gone. He reached for his socked foot only to find his work cell, like most of his cash and work credit card, was gone.

"Shawn!" he yelled futilely into the crowd of drunks, tourists, and people making their way to work in the bizarre Walk-of-Fame district. His random frustration blended unnoticed. A woman in a long, cotton caftan with a mesh beanie on her head handed Gus a religious pamphlet, proclaiming that Hollywood was Satan's favorite city because of the vain people and excess in living. Gus was too polite to decline the proffered paper and quickly shoved it into the pocket of his khakis.

"You need Jesus," the woman proclaimed to his back, adding, "I will pray for you," in a sad tone that had Gus turning around to find her staring at his retreat intently as if she wanted to say more. He hurried on.

Gus reluctantly dialed his work number. He would not be coming in tomorrow. Pacific Coast Pharmaceuticals would be short one salesman until Gus found Shawn, yelled at him, guilted him, maybe punched him, then hugged him and maybe even cried with him. For all the days for Dora from Human Resources to be unavailable and his boss to pick up, this was the worst.

"Yes, Sir, I just left my work cell back at home for my day off, wouldn't want anything to happen to it. No, Sir, I didn't lose it. No, Sir, I'm not using it for personal business. Yes, sir, I am aware that PCP tracks our cells through a third party. No, sir, there's no need to check, it's safely at home. Yes, sir, I will present a doctor's note when I come in."

Gus hung up the phone exhausted. His boss hadn't said the name of the third party security which tracked the work cells and Gus couldn't remember. Maybe he could convince Juliet to track his phone if he didn't find Shawn within an hour. But then again, Juliet was probably busy trying to find Buzz. The sun began to set on Hollywood and the neon lights burst to life but failed to set the tone of excitement and adventure for Gus that was instantly instilled on the starstruck tourists.

XXXXX

By nine O'clock, Santa Barbara was sleepy on a Thursday night as Gus reluctantly called the police station from a coffee shop near the Chinese Theater in L.A. Things couldn't be good, Chief Vick answered the phone personally.

"Mr. Guster, I was just going to have Lassiter call you. Were you able to find Shawn?"

"Not as of yet, Chief," Gus said, trying to sound positive.

"Gus, this is important, I know it's your day off but do you have your work cell on you right now?"

"Um, about that, Chief, you see Shawn kind of ..." Gus broke off, he couldn't believe he was going to have to say that his best friend had actually stolen something from him. Sure, Shawn had borrowed things without returning them before, once or twice or a hundred times but this was different.

"Shawn has it," Gus admitted without stating the obvious.

"Damn it, and he's not picking up," Vick said anxiously.

"Chief, how do you know Shawn's not picking up?"

There was a shuffling sound on the phone and Lassiter's voice came on the line.

"Guster, listen carefully. McNab left his personal cell at his apartment. We went through his call history, he's placed ten calls to your work cell. I swear if you and Spencer are trying to just help McNabb play hooky and get away from his honey-do list by hiding in Hollywood, I will come down there and shove my gun so far up your-"

"Lassie, I don't have my work cell. Shawn stole it from me," Gus admitted, swallowing past the painful lump in his throat.

"Why would McNabb be trying to call your work cell, Guster?" Lassiter barked.

"I didn't even know Buzz _had_ my work number," Gus said heatedly, wondering for the life of him why Lassiter had to yell at him.

"Okay. But Guster, when you didn't answer your work cell..." Lassiter lowered his voice and Chief Vick was heard in the background telling him he might as well speak up because she knew what unauthorized things Lassiter had done. "When you didn't answer, I called your boss just a minute ago. He activated your tracking and he may or not be waiting for you in his office tomorrow morning at nine a.m. sharp. That said, he told me that the third-party security had authorized the Santa Barbara Police Department to track you on suspicion of drug trafficking."

At that moment, Gus' personal phone vibrated, announcing a call from ... his boss.

"Lassiter what's going on?" Gus hissed anxiously sitting heavily on a stool shaped like a marshmallow at an icecream shop his feet had unknowingly brought him to. "Shawn wouldn't have had time to ... and besides he'd never... Why are you investigating me for drug trafficking! I sell legal pharmaceuticals. I'm one of the good guys."

"Take it easy, Guster, we don't believe you're selling illegal narcotics. The tracking initiative was not put in place officially through our department."

"But then that means that Buzz..."

"All we know right now is that Officer McNabb is missing and when your boss forwards us the details of your cell phone location, we'll be monitoring it for more calls from McNabb so I suggest you try to get a hold of Spencer and tell him not to tip off McNabb that we have his cellphone and tell Spencer to get his ass back to Santa Barbara or he could be implicated in whatever the hell is going on."

Gus's phone vibrated again. His boss. _Again._ His best friend was missing. Buzz McNabb was trying to frame him for selling narcotics or was coerced into doing so or was god knew what and where - and he was so fired.

His current phone call became muffled yet again as Chief Vick took over.

"Mr. Guster I just got the call. Your cell is in the Hollywood and Vine area. I haven't been able to coordinate with the L.A. Department yet but I can give you up-to-the-minute coordinates."

And the day just got even better, Gus' cell phone announced with a weak beep that it was going dead.

XXXXXXX

Shawn jumped as Gus' cell vibrated in his back pocket. He'd only taken it from Gus because he figured Gus would dial his boss on impulse and quit to come find him, and a part of Shawn clung to that thought like a lifeline. He took the phone from his pocket. Just looking at Gus' name in the tiny green letters would have to be enough company for now. He slipped the phone back in his pocket. with a heavy heart., declining Gus's call.

The cell vibrated again and Shawn withdrew it from his pocket. Gus' boss again. But the need to keep his loved ones safe overrode any guilt of declining the call. The third time the phone vibrated, Shawn was going to ignore it but thought about picking up to give Gus' boss some bogus story as to why he'd be late or absent tomorrow, because Shawn knew that Gus would need some time to come to terms with his decision and to close down the Psych office.

"Huh," Shawn said aloud as he looked down at the caller ID. Buzz McNabb? For a minute of stupidity and a little green monster rising in Shawn's chest, Shawn realized that he didn't even know Gus' work cell phone number. Every time Shawn had deduced the number, Gus would change it and lately, Shawn hadn't the time to invest in such pursuits. It was probably just Nabby collecting donations for the hospital again on behalf of his wife, Francine who headed up the annual blood drive. Declining the call but still distracted by such an unlikely caller, Shawn tucked the phone back into his pocket where it remained annoying silent. He vaguely wondered if the next caller would be Juliet. With his luck, it would be his dad who would reach through the cell to grab Shawn by the hand like a child and bring him home if he could. And damned if Shawn didn't wish that were possible, to just go home.

XXXXXX

Gus made his way back to the Blueberry which was parked in a dusty, but cheap-for-L.A. lot As he bent to fit his tired body into the driver's seat, the crumpled religious pamphlet from the cotton clad woman in front of Ripley's fell to the ground. Not one to litter even at the worst of times, he wearily stooped to pick it up, bumping his head as he straightened on the door. As he cussed at his luck and proceeded to try to crumple the pamphlet further, a symbol amongst the tatters and folds on the crisp white paper caught his attention.

_No. Just ... no._

The black and white circular design came together at the fold of the paper in Gus' shaking hands. Yin and Yang.

Gus could barely plug his phone into its charger as he started the blueberry. The phone came to life as soon as his shaking hands finally made the mark into the charger.

"Chief!" Gus yelled into the phone seeing the ID.

"Mr. Guster," Vick interrupted. "I need to caution you that someone has activated the tracking GPS on your work vehicle. I suggest you refrain from driving it until we can figure out what's going on."

"Chief, listen, we have big problems. It's Yin. He's here in L.A. I got this pamphlet shoved into my hands and I didn't look at it until just now. It has his mark. The Yin and Yang symbol."

"Guster, I want you to find a very public place to get to and call the police. I'm going to contact L.A.P.D. and have you placed in protective custody until we can arrange for you to come back."

"All due respect, Chief," Gus choked out, "Shawn is here and he doesn't know any of this. Doesn't know Yin is here. He's alone. He's going after Yin but he thinks he has time to plan. He's messed up. I can't just leave him alone. I have to find him."

"We are tracking Mr. Spencer with your work phone. Lassiter and O'Hara left here half an hour ago even though we have no jurisdiction in L.A. Henry threw his badge on my desk and followed them out. Mr. Spencer is not without certain advantages with his ... gifts and all but you cannot help him if you put yourself in harm's way."

"Chief, put yourself in my shoes, if you were here, you'd look for your best friend, your brother, now, please, give me his last location."

"Why would Shawn be back at Tussade's?" Gus wondered aloud to the chief after she read him the coordinates.

"Mr. Guster, we've already had L.A. dispatch officers informed to keep an eye out for Spencer. Please don't put yourself in danger. You know Shawn has never wanted that."

"It was a good card to play," Gus told the Chief, hanging up and putting the blueberry in gear planning to park right outside the wax museum, damn the ticket and towing of his company car. Yep, he was so fired.

XXXXXX

O'Hara picked up her phone as she sat in the passenger side of Carlton's speeding car. Now that Yin was a definite factor in everything that was going on, her resolve to see this whole case through to the end overwhelmed her. She knew in her heart that Shawn had not run away, he'd planned on running straight into the fire, just not so soon and hopefully with more planning. Now he was running blind against the most heinous murderers California had ever seen.

"Chief, have you heard from Shawn or Gus, or McNabb?" O'Hara blurted without preamble.

"We talked to Gus a few moment's ago. Since Gus found the symbol, he's bound and determined to go save Mr. Spencer but we have another problem. Francine McNabb was just taken to hospital with the same symptoms as Carlton described in the McNabb's pet cat. I informed the hospital that the cat was also sickened and as a precaution, we evacuated their entire building. According to the cat's vet, the cat became violent about two hours after being admitted and Francine punched the paramedic trying to take her blood pressure, calling him a liar and a cheat just like all the other "_uniforms_," whatever that means. The manager of the building came home from work early on my request and released the security footage from McNabb's building. Francine couldn't reach Buzz on the phone for several days but it turns out McNabb was home until about an hour before she returned from her mother's house."

Lassiter spoke into Juliet's phone. "Chief with everything going on, with Yin having been watching Spencer since childhood, and then studying us, it's not far-reaching to think that he used the same poison on Buzz and his family that was used on me by that psycho at my new apartment building. Can you have Dobson and a team inspect the vents and the rest of the place? Oh, and make sure they wear hazmat suits. That stuff ... it's-" Lassiter shuddered despite ordering his body to obey him. Visions of wanting to bisect Gus with a sword and believing without a doubt that everyone was out to get him and that the very floors and walls were watching ... it had taken months for Lassiter to recover and sometimes, even now, the memories threatened to eat him.

"Will do, let me know when you get to L.A."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shawn stared down at bus schedules on Gus' work cell as the forty-seventh rejected call came in. He looked around, and back at the screen again. He'd need a hundred and nineteen dollars to reach a decent distance from L.A or Santa Barbara to hole up and make his plans to take down Yin. A small smile that felt foreign on his face melted away as he spotted a card hustler down the block. Saying a silent sorry to Gus, Shawn discarded the work cell into a nearby garbage can and headed for the clearly illegal card trick gambling kiosk.

"Okay, kid, what's your deal, are you out to ruin me?" whispered the card hustler after his large crowd of suckers dispersed as Shawn won again and again at the shell game. At the rate of only two dollars per win, it was going to take forever to raise his bus fare and a bit of cash to live on so Shawn decided to have a "vision" right there and then.

"I'm sensing a bright light. Small, but shaded. Curious." Shawn then reached out, trance-like and snatched the man's hand up in his own. Turning the man's palm upwards, Shawn saw a small bulb attached to the fat fingers on a gaudy, plastic ring.

"Invisible ink!" Shawn hissed into the man's ear before taking a very audible deep breath as if to prepare to shout.

"Okay, okay! What do you want? I'm a small businessman, providing entertainment to tourists."

The fact that the man handed over the thousand dollars that Shawn demanded without protest showed that this was in fact a very lucrative business. Shawn pocketed the money and hurried away. He looked back as the man resumed business. With a grimace, Shawn realized that it could be him, hustling cards on the street and according to his father, Shawn might as well have been a hustler for as long as he lied about his abilities to the police, Henry Spencer had never fully approved of or been outwardly proud of his son's accomplishments, whether he was catching murderers or not. And with that miserable thought, Shawn retraced his steps back toward where Google said the bus station was.

Shawn paused in front of Madame Tussaud's. The crowd was just as thick as it had been hours earlier. Gus was so heavily on his mind that he imagined his friend's voice over the circus-like music and atmosphere of movie star imposters posing for photos with tourists and ticket scalpers selling half-priced tickets to certain venues. A slight breeze wafted the smell of fast foods and sweets. Shawn had never said no to cotton candy before but right now the thought of eating the melting spun sugar without Gus as they screamed through a haunted house or dared each other to stick it up the ghost's nose in The Laugh In The Dark Ride was too much.

Well, that was odd. He imagined that Gus would have something to say like, _Shawn, get your butt back here, you can't just go running off and_ -

But instead, Shawn heard, "Hello, this is Burton Guster, I'm currently on a clinic call but if you leave your name and number and reason for your call, I'll get right back to you, thanks and have an allergy-free day with new Benypill DM."

Shawn froze. He turned around expecting Yin to be standing behind him with Gus' blood-covered cell in hand.

"Buzz!" Shawn squeaked in relief.

"Hey man, what are you doing here? Oh ... don't tell me, Gus had me tracked on his phone and called you for help. Look, it's not what it looks like. I'm just taking a few days away. You can go on back to Santa Barbara, and be a peach, don't mention you found Gus' phone in a garbage can. He'll never forgive me."

The more Shawn talked, the more Buzz's head turned to the side like the confused drug canine unit dog he trained. So Shawn kept talking. And talking. Buzz said nothing despite the prompts from Shawn or awkward lapses between his breathes to recover from his fright that Yin might have been there.

"Ohhhh! That's right, I saw your number on Gus' phone. Did Gus invite you to join us here after shift or something?"

… And that's when Mr. Hyper-Observant finally realized that Buzz was in uniform; full uniform; gun and all."

"Geez, Vick didn't send you for me, did she? 'Cause last time I checked, trying to get some air was not a crime. And if I remember my Miami Vice correctly, you don't have jurisdiction here..."

Shawn's back stiffened when Gus' phone vibrated, and Buzz's large hand closed around it so tightly he was certain it would break.

"Come on, Nabby, lighten up. You can catch a show or go to a museum before you head out; tell Vick you never saw me..."

Buzz's dark eyes were vacant but there was something else there besides the unblinking stare. Anger. It was radiating from the tall, dark-haired officer in waves that Shawn felt in his soul. On any other day, Buzz would have noticed the dark smudges under Shawn's eyes and the exhaustion. But not today.

Shawn's eyes darted up and down the officer's body. Buzz always had good posture but he sometimes slouched to appear smaller, especially when dealing with small children or victims to appear less imposing. But now - he stepped slowly toward Shawn who was much shorter until Shawn's back touched the ticket booth of Tussaud's.

"Whoa, Nabby, personal space, man. What's your deal?"

But as Buzz's arm extended painfully over Shawn's ribs, Shawn knew the deal.

"Wow, Buzz, didn't know you cared, is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Shawn tried for levity. "Okay, okay, put that thing away, I'll come back to Santa Barbara with you, you don't havta ..." Shawn mimicked a gun with his forefinger pointing back at Buzz.

Shawn's shoulders sagged. "You're with _him_, aren't you?" he whispered.

Buzz gave a laugh that did not reach his eyes. It didn't match Buzz's boyish smile and his teeth were set; jaws locked together.

"No, because then today would be all about you, Spencer," Buzz whispered. "And for just this once, it's going to be all about me. Now, step up to the ticket counter and buy two tickets." With that instruction, Buzz drove his gun harder into Shawn's chest.

Buzz had never sought attention. He never even took time off when he'd been blown up in front of his own apartment, attacked and nearly killed by a mass murderer whose victims he found weak, hit on the head by Yin's minion, and the list went on.

And he'd never called Shawn by his surname before.

"How long were you following me?" Shawn asked quietly as he carefully read Buzz's body language and tuned into his speech mannerisms.

'You know, Spencer, for a psychic, you're pretty stupid. I've been tracking Gus' phone that you ditched in that garbage can and his car for days. I got to L.A. half an hour ago and I found you already? Not a very good psychic, are you?"

Buzz's boyish charm reappeared briefly as he leaned toward the hole in the ticket taker's glass. "This scum's out on escorted leave, you might want to hold back more decent folk for a few minutes so I can rush 'im through and get 'im back to lockup," he said as he shoved Shawn forward. And sure enough, the, _be back in ten minutes_ sign went up facing the annoyed tourists.

Shawn was annoyed for the first time in his life that people didn't notice anything, that he was cursed to notice trivialities, you know, like the patches on the tall man's uniform were for Santa Barbara!

"Buzz, come on man, we're friends. What's going on?"

"You're psychic, you tell me, Shawn … Oh wait, you're _not _psychic."

Shawn gaped like a fish but no words would come out of his mouth. The ice that fell into Shawn's stomach didn't cut the pain when Buzz shoved him against a wall and proceeded to frisk him like a suspect.

"You better buy me lunch first, bit friendly there, Buzz." But he couldn't bring himself to ask how Buzz knew his secret and if anyone else knew.

"You put us all in danger, Spencer. Jules, Lassiter – not like I care, they can go to hell, overlooked me the same as everyone else. When I told Juliet about your lies, it was awesome to watch her run to the bathroom to cry. All Lassiter did was to start polishing his gun. Vick though? She was the best. _Henry Spencer, you and your son are fired. Get out of my station!"_ Buzz said, raising his voice several octaves to match his boss's tones.

"Buzz I – n-never wanted to hurt any-" Shawn said, his heart sinking into the pit of his pocket.

"But you did. You did. And you didn't even stop to think what it would do to me if Francie found out that I was stripping at that resort. I was just trying to make some money so I could take her on a proper honeymoon, but no, you had to have a _vision. _Buzz mimicked the way Shawn often put his fingers to his temple to help him with his abilities. The most disturbing part of any of it was that Buzz used the butt of his gun instead of his fingers.

And that's when Shawn noticed that the young officer's hands shook viciously, itching at the trigger involuntarily.

"McNabb, honestly, I never even knew that you – stripped. Honest." And Shawn _was_ being honest. He had no knowledge of Buzz's extra, um, _employment _other than some sports arena security.

"Francie left me, Shawn!" Buzz shouted, aiming his pistol at Shawn's chest. "So I trekked you here. You hurt people I love, I hurt people you love, if you're even capable of loving anyone other than yourself."

"Buzz, what the hell have you done?" Shawn asked as his hand raked his face.

Buzz laughed. "Do you know how easy it is to get access to GPS on phones and cars? I may or may not have framed Gus for selling his samples on the street and pocketing the money. First I was going to kill him, but then I realized with you out of the picture and after a stint in jail, Gus might just be another of your victims left in the dust after I kill you."

Shawn took a deep breath. He needed to think. He'd have given anything to have Gus there to create a distraction, to dance around, to fly an imaginary plane as images and random visual snapshots collected in his cataloged brain could come into focus.

And to wish that Gus was here … was selfish. He stared at McNabb's service revolver.

"Say something!" McNabb screamed, the quiet, sinister demeanor leaving to be replaced by uneven breathes and wide eyes as the officer swiped strands of hair from his sweaty brow.

_Shawn, get a hold of yourself, _Henry Spencer fumed inside Shawn's head. _The air conditioning is insanely cold in here, it's a wax museum in California for Pete's sake, they can't afford to lose their waxworks. So why is McNabb sweating, son?_

_I don't know, dad, you tell me, I'm a bit busy here with a gun pointed at my heart._

_Heart … Heart_ … Shawn forced himself to focus on Buzz. The officer's shirt was unbuttoned around his neck and he pawed at it incessantly as if it was strangling him. Shawn studied his neck. Buzz's collar was heaving up and down with labored breaths, his carotid artery stuck out and Shawn methodically counted the pulse.

_He's either going to have a heart attack or stroke, Shawn, look at his pulse, it's way too fast, _Gus chimed in Shawn's mind.

Shawn felt a sob escape him. He'd wanted to be alone to face Yin but now he realized, he would never truly be alone, even now in death. McNabb wasn't Yin, but somehow the young newlywed had been taken.

"McNabb, this isn't you."

"Shut it, Shawn. Your silver-tongued bull crap isn't going to work this time," McNabb sneered quietly hiding the gun as a couple of tourists strolled by.

Buzz stumbled as he shoved Shawn past the royal family who were still wearing their horror gear. As Buzz passed by, his head turned in temporary distraction at the weird sight of Charles in a hockey mask.

_Shawn, move! _Henry screamed in Shawn's head as Shawn snapped to attention, shoving Buzz's right arm upward and elbowing the tall man in the solar plexus.

Buzz momentarily released Shawn's shoulder and Shawn ran, unable to zig-zag as he had done when he'd been shot by the ice cream truck bandits as he called them now. And how messed up was it that he was running for his life … again.

Shawn stopped running. Up ahead, another class of probably fourth-graders gathered to adore the giant, green ogre. Shawn raised his hands and backed into a wall around yet another corner where he bumped into a door for employees only. He made sure McNabb would see the door close behind him.

Shawn scanned the room, his own heart pounding so that he felt every precious beat He'd never be able to tell Juliet how he truly felt. Even if he somehow got out of this mess, she would never trust him again. His dad had been right. It couldn't last; these lies that masked his true abilities but now, he couldn't even find it in his heart to blame Lassiter for backing him into a corner of freedom or truth when they'd met.

A door to a closet-sized room labeled _Dark Room_ spilled loud music from the crack under the door.

Shawn grabbed a broom that was leaning against a wall and shoved it into the darkroom door handle. Whoever was in there needed to live.

Buzz caught up, Shawn hadn't even thought of locking the entrance door if it would save the kids outside their innocence not having to witness what was surely going to happen.

"Hero," McNabb mocked. "See? you think I'd kill you in front of kids! Do you have any idea what I've been through because of you? God, Shawn I was so messed up from that concussion I got the night I was attacked while I picked your girlfriend up from the airport. And you know what? Everyone, including me, worried about _you._ How _you_ felt. How _you_ were. You know who cared about me? Francine! And now she's gone. All because you couldn't keep your stupid mouth shut."

"Buzz, I swear to God, I didn't even know anything about you stripping. I haven't spoken to your wife since your wedding."

"He said you'd say that…" McNabb said, loosening his shirt even more with fumbling fingers that didn't want to cooperate with his wishes.

"It's too hot, open the door slowly and get out," McNabb said. "It's hard to breathe in here."

"No," Shawn said quietly. "You'll have to do it in here, like you said, kids are out there."

"…Too hot, though," Buzz said in frustration, his hand shaking as if the gun weighed too much as he stared around for the source of the extra heat.

In the middle of the room, a twelve-foot-tall steel vat of heated wax with ladder rungs etched into its side in a circular pattern waited to gobble up the torso of an unfortunate, discontinued male figure which dangled on a block and tackle above.

The heat wasn't helping McNabb's precarious hold on his trigger finger as Shawn babbled incessantly, desperately trying to gain control of the situation.

"McNabb, could you just do one thing. Could you clear Gus' name? You know he's never even had a parking ticket. There's no sense ruining his life for being stupid enough to be friends with me."

McNabb aimed the gun from Shawn's chest to his head. "No, that's the part of your suffering, knowing that he will suffer. That your dad will suffer. Juliet will get over you, Lassiter never liked you and Vick will probably be fired."

"Why would you want that, Buzz?" Shawn asked, trying to keep the now panting officer calm.

"I don't know … um, Don't try to distract me. He said you'd -"

Shawn eyed the lever for the block and tackle which was just to his left. Leaning over as if suddenly nauseated, he pushed the down lever and the chain and wax torso slammed into Buzz like a possessed tackle dummy.

"OOF!" Buzz, hissed, hitting the ground. Shawn leaped forward and stepped on Buzz's right hand still miraculously clutching his gun.

Buzz's training took over as his left foot swept around the back of Shawn's ankle and his right foot snapped knee cartilage with sickening accuracy that sent the detective to the floor gasping in agony. In seconds Buzz was staring down into Shawn's face as he straddled his chest, gun pointed directly between Shawn's eyes.

Shawn screwed his eyes shut, he didn't know what good that would do but it inadvertently bought him some time.

"Open your eyes, Shawn! Do you think I got to close my eyes when I was flying through the air from that mailbox bomb that your _psychic abilities_ failed to warn me of? And guess who was there for me? Francie. And. Now. She's. Gone!" Buzz punctuated his words by stabbing out the syllables with the butt of his gun into Shawn's sternum until his weight and blows took Shawn's breath away.

_Shawn, do you remember that women's self-defense class you helped teach in San Jose? _Gus's voice echoed in Shawn's frantic brain. _Bring your knee up into little Nabby, throw your hands above your head and roll. Do it now!_

CRUNCH! Shawn rolled, his injured knee first hitting McNabb and then the floor as he struggled to his feet. Shawn dove behind a wax George Bush just as the head was blown off the somehow surprised looking statue. He landed in the president's abandoned clothing, wax shrapnel showering everything and disappearing with a hiss into the hot vat of wax to blend with whoever had become an object of disinterest before them.

Shawn picked up a useless shank of wax to point at Buzz who was getting to his feet, gasping, all color drained from his face.

"Buzz – p – please, man, th-there's a reason you're not shooting me. You came here t-to kill me. You know I never told Francine that you stripped man, I never even knew that."

"No one knew that. You – you…" Buzz mimicked Shawn's famous finger-to-temple pose.

"But, Buzz, you already know I-I'm a fraud." The poisonous words hurt. "How could I possibly know that?"

"Francie's gone!" Buzz grabbed his chest and fell to his knees and for a moment of self-preserving cruelty, Shawn wished that Buzz would collapse to the floor.

"But I'm supposed to – I have t-to," Buzz panted. With resolve that seemed to come from a voice that no one else could hear, Buzz ordered Shawn to climb up onto the top of the vat of wax.

Shawn's legs shook beneath his weight. He tried to drag himself up the rungs of the ladder but avoided looking down at the gooey, greyish concoction and somehow it seemed perverse to melt even wax people together. He could hear Gus's distaste in his head.

_Shawn, you remember when we watched too much Shark Week specials on National Geographic followed by that painting show to try to get over the fright? Well, if you don't fight, your body is going to melt into that greyish mess in what Bob Ross would call Jaws-death-scene-maroon and it won't be a happy little accident. _

And then Shawn got an idea. "What did Yin tell you to do to me, Buzz?"

"I have to shoot you," Buzz said with a little too much ease that didn't match his posture.

Shawn didn't want to burn alive. "Then shoot me, Buzz. If you were ever my friend, shoot me."

Buzz's head cocked to the side just as it had when he'd first caught up with Shawn. But then his glazed-over look took over anew and he swiped his hand across his face, perspiring heavily, the smell of melting wax imitating a thousand candles burning at once without the comforting glow of warm light.

Loud voices emanating from the hallway were familiar. Buzz's eyes widened in pain as the ear-splitting fire alarms went off throughout the museum.

_Please make your way to the nearest exit_, a disembodied voice ordered over and over again.

"Buzz,, the police are here..."

"_I'm_ the police in case you forgot like everyone does. _McNabb, stand in front of this door for two days, McNabb, get my coffee, McNabb, sorry, we're going to have to take back that case we just gave you that we told you might help you make detective, McNabb lick my boots!"_

"McNabb, put the gun down." The voice belonged to Lassiter, Buzz turned around as if trying to decide whether he'd heard it in his head or his buzzing ears.

"No, I - I'm finished now anyway. Francie left," Buzz sobbed as Lassiter's gun aimed directly at his chest. His own arm was still cocked toward Shawn who stood on the brink of the wax vat.

Juliet looked at Shawn's knee. Even from her angle, joining her partner in aiming at her fellow officer's heart, she could see the swelling in the shaking limb.

"Okay, Shawn?" she asked, all business before addressing Buzz. "Buzz, Francie didn't leave you. She's been calling you for three days. She came home to find you gone and she came to us looking for you."

"No, she left … she knows .. Shawn told her about my j-job."

"Buzz," Juliet said, holding one hand palm out. Francie loves you. She's been crying for days because you'd been fighting."

"Lies! He told m-me." But Buzz was looking a bit confused.

"Buzz, look, Francie needs you. She's in the hospital."

"Don't try that with me, I'm a cop too, remember? Hostage negotiation one-oh-one. Just because you send me to do all your menial tasks, like going to the airport to pick up _his_ flavor of the day and almost getting killed by Yin. Yeah, that's right, _I_ was there too! You all forgot that, didn't you! I was so glad that you found Abigail and Juliet, Shawn, but you know what? I laid on that parking garage floor for an hour, bleeding from where I crashed into my cruiser after I was drugged! I woke up blind from concussion! I went to the hospital as a John Doe because he took my ID, even my uniform shirt was gone and I couldn't remember my own name for an hour until the swelling came down. And do you know who came for me to take me back to the station to supposedly be protected? Francie. And now she's gone!"

Lassiter did his best trying to keep Buzz talking as Juliet made her way around the vat. Shawn didn't dare to move. The way McNabb's hands were shaking now, the trigger was likely to be spasm-pulled even without the malice in Buzz's body which seemed on autopilot.

"We didn't know, McNabb. An hour was like a second that night with Juliet and Abigail and the stupid riddles and rhymes," Lassiter's voice actually broke but his stance remained rigid and resigned and Shawn knew without a doubt that Lassiter would shoot Buzz if he thought he had to.

"… and someone k-kept telling me – they said Francie w-wanted someone with money. She deserves more. And so I tried but the headaches … the extra shifts. So two weeks ago I – I got a job – dancing. All I wanted was for Francie to have a n-nice honeymoon and we-were being kicked out of our apartment because the manager didn't want me there because of the bomb damage. M-my insurance didn't cover the repairs. I – didn't know what to do."

"McNabb, we can fix all that. The department can fix that. You shouldn't have had to go through that, the department's insurance should have paid…"

Buzz looked like a kicked puppy, albeit a kicked puppy with a deadly weapon currently trained on another one of their own.

Buzz was backing up toward the vat. He warned Juliet to back off as he climbed up to stand next to Shawn on the platform with see-through rebar slats in the top.

"Buzz, please we don't want to shoot you. But we will. You know that," Lassiter warned.

"I can't eat grapes anymore," Buzz said out of nowhere. "In th-the garage, all I could smell as I tried to get up was grapes. It was on my undershirt; someone had poured wine or something all over me. No, the bottle – I had twenty stitches to the back of my head. It was a wine bottle … I woke up in the glass and someone was whispering to me but they w-wouldn't help me. At first, the doctors at the hospital called me a drunk, left me lying in the hallway until my blood labs came back negative for alcohol."

Juliet's eyes filled with tears. She and Abby weren't the only ones fighting to survive that horrible night. The only difference was, Buzz thought he was fighting alone.

"Niagara ice wine, Buzz," Shawn said softly. "It was on Yin's breath when he was at the pier too." Shawn swallowed past the bile in his throat as his eidetic memory refused to let go of the smell.

Henry Spencer entered the room holding his ears against the howling fire alarms and Buzz suddenly looked panicked.

"Mr. Sp-Spencer, please go. "Y-you shouldn't have to – " he gestured wildly with his gun toward Shawn. "You weren't part of the plan."

Henry for his part grimaced as he looked at his son, trembling before a vat of hot wax on shaking limbs.

"Buzz, Francie wants to talk to you. She's at the hospital. She's not on shift there. She's a patient. She has something to tell you." Henry held out his phone to the young officer who looked at the phone as if it was a bomb and as he'd reminded them all, he knew what a bomb felt like.

"No more people!" Buzz screamed as Gus burst through the doors. Gus automatically put his hands up in the air but kept walking toward the sizzling vat of wax. There were just too many guns in here. Juliet saw the telltale crinkle of concentration of Lassiter's half-closed eye as he looked down the short barrel of his gun, the head detective's posture was rigid in grim determination…


	3. Chapter 3

Gus closed his eyes. Maybe bursting into an active hostage situation at the wax museum wasn't the best idea he'd ever had but there was little time for regret. He spared a second for a small whimper, conveying that he'd read the same body language in Lassiter's stance that O'Hara had interpreted. Lassiter was ready to do his job in the only way that could spare all but one life. Only in the movies did cops shoot guns out of criminal's hands; in real life, the trick shot was just too risky, and officers were taught to aim center mass. Gus gathered his wits. He'd come here to save Shawn and if he could save Buzz, all the better.

"Lassiter, the report came in from the hazmat team. Buzz's apartment was pumped full of the same drug that you were exposed to in your apartment and microphones were found hidden in the vents as well. Buzz was being manipulated. His wife is responding to treatment but his little boy cat is dying from the effects." Gus whispered the last part. If there was any humanity left in poor Buzz he did not need to hear that.

Lassiter really didn't want to shoot McNabb now.

"McNabb, you've been drugged," Lassiter told the trembling officer who now had his long arm snaked around Shawn's shoulders.

"He said you'd say th-that," Buzz said for the seventh time that day. "But it's real, Francie l-left me…"

Shawn stared at his best friend who picked up his cell when it rang an ironic jaunty song about Pina Coladas. _Phone calls now? Really? Come on son!_ Buzz seemed on autopilot and was the only person in the room not cringing in incredulity.

Hanging up the phone, Gus turned to McNabb even as Lassiter, Henry, and Juliet all ordered him to leave.

"Francine is awake. She's calling my cell in a minute." Gus quickly changed his ringtone to a generic bell not having time to look sheepish.

The phone rang, barely audible against the screaming fire alarms and finally, the sprinklers turned on. The cold water from above hissed and popped on the top of the hot wax and Gus held his finger in his free ear in order to hear the phone call.

Gus simply walked up to the vat and held the phone up to McNabb as high as he could reach.

"It is your wife, Buzz. I swear to God, it's Francine."

And for some reason, Buzz believed Gus. But McNabb was well trained, better than anyone there gave him credit for. His gun never strayed from Shawn's body as Gus climbed the rung, unable to reach Buzz's outstretched hand as far as he was willing to lean over anyway. If this were anyone else, Lassiter would have a shooting solution and he would have taken it but the head detective had demons of his own to battle after being exposed to that drug through his vents and that was with his own imagination in play, not with added microphones and Yin telling him God only knew what.

Lassiter fought the urge to close his eyes as his finger pressed firmer over his trigger. Yin had never lost, stronger cops than the innocent Buzz McNabb has succumbed to him in droves.

Gus had a determined look in his eyes that Henry had seen many times when Shawn and he had competed for various prizes or favor in the past. The tension in the room changed. Buzz reached down, Gus reached up, grabbing McNabb's shirt instead of his hand and succeeding in pulling the much larger man off the rungs of the vat. Henry dove onto Buzz's thrashing body as Lassiter sprawled across the room to grab his gun out of his hand where it was still firmly clutched. At that moment, the fire alarms stopped and Francine's tiny screams from the phone intensified by Buzz's wheezes and groans of pain. Running footsteps were heard in the hall as Juliet, her gun still trained on Buzz made her way toward the vat upon which Shawn had fallen to his knees.

The horror that Buzz had been through weighed unbearably on Shawn. If he'd only told the truth, he never would have been dating Abby, he'd have left Santa Barbara again by now, never having worked at the department. None of this would have happened. And worse, he couldn't stop being selfish – because Juliet knew…

Henry looked pained as he punched McNabb in the face as Lassiter tried to wrestle the gun from the drugged cop. But now Lassiter remembered the feeling of invincibility, the extra strength…

McNabb stood like Goliath and broke free of both men, climbing the vat like the crazed King Kong up to the top of the Empire State Building. Lassiter latched on to his leg as Juliet kept her gun trained on McNabb. It didn't escape her attention that she too, would have taken a shot by now had circumstances been different and if Shawn wasn't pleading with Lassiter in particular not to kill McNabb.

A bullhorn sounded outside.

"Officer McNabb, come out with your hands up! We have you surrounded."

Lassiter rolled his eyes. He knew he was in Hollywood for sure now with that line.

McNabb's hand went to his heart and his face paled as he looked desperately to Juliet and Lassiter.

"I – I – wanna go home," he gasped as his gun arm fell to his side as the doors burst open and a flash-bang in quick succession marked the spot on Buzz's chest where the bullet found its mark.

A/N So we see from this that sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield and poor Buzz, well he's been the bug for a long time and Yin loves to squash bugs along the way to destroying Shawn for good. and he's not finished yet. Longer chapters coming up next Thanks for the reviews and watches. Please review if you can.


	4. chapter 4

"NO! STAND DOWN!" Lassiter yelled as Buzz turned to Shawn with wide eyes, clutching his bloody torso before falling into the kneeling man's arms and tipping both of them into the vat of wax.

"Shawn!" Gus shouted as the gunfire quieted and he ran like a football player through the chaos of museum security sparring over the shot. Juliet reached the top of the vat just after Gus followed by Lassiter as Henry was handcuffed for punching a security officer who tried to get in his way.

For a minute, Shawn and Buzz floated on a chunk of molten wax that had formed on the top of the vat because of the cold water from above. But the wax split like an ice floe in spring. Shawn gasped in pain as he struggled to remain afloat, holding Buzz's head above the surface for as long as he could.

Gus lurched to his stomach on the edge of the grate and groped downward. His hands didn't come close to touching the tip of Shawn's fingers.

"I-I'll be b-back,," Shawn gasped, his mouth set in a grim line.

"Really, Shawn, The Terminator?" Gus choked sadly as he grabbed for the block and tackle to try to reach the quickly sinking men.

Lassiter brought the screaming match between Henry and security to a screeching halt by swearing by sweet lady justice that he'd personally see to it that they'd all lose their jobs and go to jail if they didn't get it together and get his officers out of that damned vat. It was clear that he had more authority than the young security officers there combined, and jurisdiction be damned, they would listen by sheer fear of the man.

Shawn didn't want to look down, but McNabb was slipping from his grasp, his head lolling downward.

"Nabby, don't do this," Shawn begged as yep, the distinct color of Jaws-blood-red mixed with the wax. A real person was melting with fake ones. Shawn kept praying that his feet would hit bottom but he knew they wouldn't.

"G-Gus, I could use that door f-from the Titanic movie display right about n-now. And … and I won't be like Rose. I'll share."

"Just hang on Shawn." Gus choked as Juliet helped with the block and tackle.

Lassiter demanded the key to Henry's cuffs. Henry sprinted to the top of the vat in seconds, grabbing the block and tackle from Juliet as Lassiter called an ambulance.

"Hold on kid, we're gonna get you out. You're gonna be fine," Henry said.

And damned if Shawn didn't wish Henry would yell at him so he knew he'd be okay.

"Buzz!" Shawn screamed as Buzz slipped impossibly further into the wax.

"I c-can't hold him!" Shawn sobbed as his own voice gurgled as the wax burped up into his face.

"Gus, use this wax to seal a strongly worded letter to Tussaud's. Th-they melted Nancy Reagan. I saw her clothes next to Bush's. Kinky. N-now how will people know to j-just say no to drugs? Look – at what happened to Lassieface and – Buzz."

_That's it, Shawn, distract yourself from the pain…_Gus smiled down at Shawn in what he hoped was more encouraging than a grimace.

Shawn dragged his hand up from the wax and felt for McNabb's pulse but the heat and coating took away all of his dexterity and feeling so Shawn drowned out all the yelling and chaos and stared at Buzz's forehead where a violently blue vein had surfaced in a V formation. Shawn shut his eyes and concentrated on his arms that he wrapped around his friend. His chest was not moving.

"He's not breathing!" Shawn screamed. Shawn's foot found purchase on what felt like the un-melted hind end of a wax cow and Shawn had a flash of distinct hoof marks in the dust of an absent bovine from the western display from earlier.

Shawn's fingers slipped on Buzz's nostrils as he tried to pinch his nose. He tipped Buzz's head back, balancing on the bovine butt as he tried to ignore the pain of being cooked alive. He blew three quick breaths into Buzz's mouth and listened for a return of air exchange. There was none.

"He's … dead," Shawn gasped.

"Keep trying, Shawn," Gus instructed.

Shawn wheezed out a breath, gulping in as much air as he could before forcing it from his body to Buzz's.

Once the block and tackle was ready, it was clear that Shawn couldn't reach up to grab it, his hands were too slippery and he was the only thing preventing Buzz from sinking faster.

Gus looped his legs through the rope and hung upside down, instructing Juliet to lower him down as Henry and Lassiter squeezed together on the small ledge to grab Shawn and Buzz.

Gus looked away from Buzz's blue-tinged lips. "Give me your arms, Shawn," he said quietly to his best friend. "I'll get him, I swear."

The heat had taken Shawn's ability to think coherently and he slurred as though drunk.

"A-alive, Gus … he's alive. N-neck pulse."

Gus doubted that but to expedite things because Shawn was not letting go of Buzz even if they both died, he reached for the young officer.

The tendons stood out on Gus' surprisingly toned arms and he shook as he pulled with all his might not to lose McNabb. Electricity helped pull them both up but did nothing to secure the slippery victim in his arms or take the weight burden from him as the blood rushed to his head.

Just as Gus's hands grew warm and slippery from the hot wax, Henry and Lassiter took his burden and passed him, mosh-pit-style to the floor. Juliet turned the block and tackle hoist over to a security officer and jumped down the last rungs of the ladder to kneel next to McNabb. Her hands slipped on the waxy chest as she tried to perform CPR the best she could while praying for Gus to bring Shawn safely up.

Gus tried to get some of the wax off of his hands as Lassiter tried to help him lower himself down again.

"Guster, it would be better if I try this time. My hands are at least dry to begin with, I'll have more purchase to grip."

This made sense so Gus wound the ropes around Lassiter's ankles and the head detective started his ascent just as Shawn's body shifted and his arms wind-milled into an awkward backstroke as he sunk out sight.

… _and that kiddies is why people ride horses and not cows, _Shawn's heat-stroked brain told him.

"Hold your breath! I order you to hold your breath, detective!" Lassiter commanded as he fished up to his armpits in the hot wax, holding just his head out, His fingers found hair. It would have to do. Lassiter grabbed the nape of Shawn's neck and wound his fingers in as much hair as he could get a-hold of.

"Pull us up, damn it, I can't hold 'im for long!" Once Shawn's head appeared, Lassiter slipped his arms around his chest as best he could. The heat had eroded Lassiter's strength and the adrenaline had deserted him long ago when shots had rung out when they shouldn't have. His body shook as he clung to the young man whose father waited with open arms at the top.

Shawn's eyes were closed. He never made a sound. Wax dripped from his open lips as once again, hands caught him and guided him to the floor.

Gus slid his way to his friend's side in seconds, with a brief glimpse of Juliet still doing chest compressions on Buzz.

"Not breathing!" Gus shouted as Shawn's body shuddered. But his friend's chest was sucking in and out uselessly.

"Roll 'im!" Henry shouted as Shawn vomited wax amidst groans of pain and tried to claw at his eyes which were sealed.

Lassiter slid Shawn away from the pool of wax vomit with Gus and Henry then went to help Juliet with Buzz and take over CPR.

"Go find an AED!" Lassiter shouted at the nearest officer who ran from the room and returned seconds later with the device.

Between Lassiter's compressions, Juliet tore Buzz's shirt open, plastic buttons pinging in every direction. She scraped the blood and wax away as best she could and applied the AED pad. The indications to shock appeared and the machine did its work.

_No conversion_, the AED announced before trying again with no success.

"McNabb, You will not die. That is an order, constable!"

The AED charged and Buzz's body arched as his heart began to beat sluggishly but he fought for every breath he took.

On the other side of the vat, Shawn struggled to breathe. He tried to roll onto his back to take the pressure from the side of his injured knee, but someone held him gently but firmly on his side.

_So hot ... why was it so hot? _ The senses upon which the young detective relied were muted. There were voices but they were bodiless in the haze of a sliver of white shadow.

"He's going into shock," Henry advised Gus. "Where the hell are the medics!"

Using a line from Madagascar, Gus used a different approach with his best friend. "I swear to God, Shawn, if you die, I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna strangle you, then bury you, then dig you up and clone you and kill all your clones and not talk to you again."

Henry pinned his son's hands to his side as Shawn tried desperately to claw at his eyes again.

With a thrill of horror, Gus realized that Shawn's left eye was open slightly and still covered in milky white wax.

"Shawn, try to be still, the paramedics will be here soon."

"I've heard of w-wax in the ears, but this is … ridiculous," Shawn gasped as his eyes flew open behind the molten wax which didn't separate in the slightest and caused the fake psychic to cry out in agony and with renewed strength, he fought the hands holding him down before becoming limp, his pupils disappearing behind the wax as they rolled back in his head.

"Shawn!" Henry yelled as Gus futilely tried to scoop more wax from Shawn's mouth before he choked again.

Banging sounded from somewhere behind them. Something shattered and a young man spilled from a door onto the floor. "Didn't anyone hear me! I yelled and banged on the door before getting under a table in the darkroom," he yelled to the security guards. You were supposed to sweep the building if an alarm goes off."

Taking in the chaos around him, he shifted gears.

"What happened here?" he asked, stepping around the trails of wax.

"What temperature is that wax?" Lassiter asked, getting right to business.

"Were they … in the…"

The man pushed his hands through his blonde hair as it fetched up in his ponytail. He walked around the vat and bent to examine a gauge no one else had seen in all confusion.

The man blew out a long breath. "It's hotter than a manicure dip or hair wax … but if they weren't in long, they could make it. We melt slowly or the wax burns and takes on a tint … they're … sort of … poached? If you don't get their temps down, they will die," he said with certainty.

No one was surprised but they had been kept busy keeping Shawn and Buzz's hearts beating and supporting their breathing.

Juliet's hand rested on Buzz's chest as Lassiter peeled wax from his forearms. Adrenaline had kept him focused on anything but the pain in his arms. The wax peeled like bandage glue, taking hair with it and leaving sunburnt looking skin behind.

"We need to peel the wax off. I don't know what's keeping the paramedics but if we're to cool them down, we need to get it off."

Lassiter swallowed his own agony and propped Buzz up slightly as fresh blood blossomed across the officer's chest. Juliet bit back small sobs as she peeled Buzz's shirt off. The areas where the wax was somewhat diverted from his skin by his shirt were pink with heat but the areas where the shirt had ridden up, were angry red and coated in wax. She slapped her fingers under the wax, slicing it through it with an index fingernail and peeled.

"Lassiter you're lucky you didn't get dunked, your stern bush wouldn't thank you for that," Gus said and Juliet smiled despite her grim task. Thank God for Gus, he was doing exactly what Shawn would want him to do.

Shawn woke screaming, wondering why he was being skinned and gutted like one of his father's prized fish. His flesh had tried to sweat under the wax and he slipped from Henry's grasp and rolled to his back arched up only on his elbows and heels, head back exposing the throbbing tendons in his neck as he gasped pitifully.

"Shawn, breathe, just try to breathe, try to calm down, the paramedics are coming. It's going to be okay … you're going to be okay."

None of it reached Shawn's ears but Gus had no choice but to continue his torturous task as a security guard was enlisted to help hold him down.

Lassiter get my purse!" Juliet ordered her boss who obeyed from her tone alone. Juliet flung the contents of her bag across the room until she found plastic packets she was looking for.

Without embarrassment, Juliet extracted a feminine hygiene pad. "Apply pressure with this, it's sterile and he's bleeding out now that the wax is gone."

"Get his pants," Jules ordered the wax artist who stood stock still like his creations in fear. "Please," Juliet added as a security guard yelled into his radio.

"You've got to be freaking kidding me, we have two people who are going to die if the paramedics don't get here like ten minutes ago."

"What now?" Lassiter hissed, trying to hide his pain as he worked on peeling wax from Buzz's abdomen. It was a good thing that Buzz had taken up … _dancing _There was no hair on his chest to impede the peeling.

Juliet breathed a sigh of relief as Buzz's pants and boots came off in one, solid piece, leaving his legs hot and pink but not covered in wax. Buzz's boxers were wax free so Lassiter left them in place.

Shawn wasn't quite as lucky; his sandals had allowed his feet to become ensconced in the drying wax and a small bit had made its way up his ankles. Someone produced a pair of scissors and Gus cut away his pants, wincing as Shawn's knee was exposed, twice its normal size and black and blue. When Gus removed Shawn's sandals a sickening THWUCK THWUCK! sounded as the wax peeled away with them leaving white skin under the strap's protection and violent red where the skin had been bare.

Shawn's body went limp in his father's arms mercifully still breathing.

"You won't believe this but this _is_ La La Land – tourists are creating a mob that is keeping firetrucks and ambulances busy; they think this is all some publicity stunt for a movie because of the paparazzi that's been hovering around to get a scoop on that dizzy actress. They've been asking real firefighters for an autograph! I swear I'm moving outta this crazy town."

"Guster, you said your car was parked illegally right out front?" Lassiter said. McNabb isn't going to wait anymore. We gotta get him to the hospital." Lassiter changed improvised bandages on Buzz's chest as they blossomed with blood. "We'll elevate his feet over the seat and hold him steady in the back of my car and you take Spencer in your car. I don't think he has spinal injuries, we'll have to be able to bend them."

"How are we going to carry them out of here?" Juliet asked, "Even with all-hands-on-deck, it's too much instability."

"Baywatch," Gus gasped, trying not to puke as he pulled off Shawn's shirt and the wax went with it but stayed in a perfect bust of his torso, back of head and neck.

"Gus, don't speak idiocy," Lassiter growled through clenched teeth.

Gus ignored the pained man.

"No, Baywatch, there's a display down the hall, there's backboards and everything, right near Hasselhoff."

"On it," the security guard said, noticing for the first time that the guard who'd shot Buzz was gone. He returned less than a minute later with the backboards and towels he'd snagged from the wax sunbathers.

On the count of four, Buzz's battered body was lifted onto the backboard and Lassiter, Juliet and two guards took off with him. Shawn cried out as his body was placed on the backboard and as his father reluctantly strapped his feet down, his hands slipped from Gus's slippery grasp and ripped the wax from his eye sockets. He moaned, jamming his palm into his left eye, the other eye squinting up.

Shadows were all that he could discern. The voices continued as someone took his hands and forced them to his side, strapping his chest down, a towel between him and the strap sawing like sandpaper on his reddened skin.

"G-Gus? Dad?" Shawn whispered hoarsely.

Shawn's eyes fell on his father and his best friend but there was no recognition, only fear.

Gus placed his hand in Shawn's palm and traced the scar Shawn had accidentally made on him when they were kids trying to jump off roofs with umbrellas. Gus nodded to Henry, who'd paled.

Shawn couldn't see.

Gus prompted Henry out of his temporary stupor by placing the once retired detective's hand in his son's. Shawn's fingers traced the callouses and fishhook scars along his father's fingers.

"Y- you're – real," Shawn said before his eyes rolled back in his head again.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Juliet drove Lassiter's car while Gus drove his and with lights flashing and sirens wailing, she guided them through the throngs of frenzied tourists and super fans. Once clear of the hoards, a stopped firetruck blinked its lights at Juliet and she stopped, hopping out of the car and explaining the situation while fishing for her useless badge.

Firefighters hopped from their rig carrying oxygen and medical supplies, two of them wore paramedic gear.

"Chief, we've got severe hyperthermia in both victims," a paramedic called. "ETA to St. Francis is twenty-five minutes in this traffic. We've been advised to take cooling measures."

Lassiter stood in the background, his arms around his body. Three yellow plastic tarps were placed on the ground and Juliet had ratted out her injured boss as a firefighter escorted him to sit down despite his protests.

The paramedics spoke to a doctor on their radios. An IV was inserted into Buzz's arm and one directly into his carotid. Combat gauze was placed over his bullet wound and the paramedic inserted an oral airway while another assisted his breathing. McNabb remained still as stone as the paramedic noted cyanosis to the doctor.

"Temp is one-oh-five, tactile," the paramedic working on Shawn announced as he inserted an IV into Shawn's arm.

"Ow," Shawn groaned weakly.

"I know, kid, sorry," Henry said.

Shawn never heard the apology but the tone suggested that the IV wasn't the only thing he was sorry about.

"We're ready, Cap," the paramedic called. "Gently hold his legs and arms," the mustached man instructed. "It's imperative that we get his temperature down or he's going to convulse."

Henry and Gus nodded, looking sick as the engineer set the hose nozzle to gentle spray and Shawn's body was showered with cold water alongside Buzz who was undergoing the same treatment seemingly without the threat of waking up as no one held the young officer down.

"GAH!" Shawn screamed, suddenly shocked into consciousness when he desperately craved to pass out. "St-stop, please?" His voice was childlike, coming out of the dark. "C-cold – please stop!" Goosebumps rose on his flesh despite his core temperature.

"Shawn," the kind paramedic said, leaning into Shawn's line of sight to at least present a shadow. "I'm Mike, a paramedic with L.A.F.D. We're here to help you. You're going to be alright very soon but right now, what's happening is that your body is too hot and we need to get you cooled."

"H-hurts," Shawn sobbed, tears leaking from his eyes that ran oddly down the wax tracks on his red face.

"I know it. I know it does," Mike soothed. "I've been there before, big fire in '89 in Yosemite when I was green as grass and new to the department. Got too close to the dragon and he nearly ate me."

Henry was glad for Mike's easy banter. He and Gus were out of words.

Mike took Shawn's pulse. "I think we can give you something for the pain now, kid," he said, fishing out a prefilled syringe and inserting it into Shawn's IV.

Gus swallowed the lump in his throat. Shawn's body loosened but he didn't go deadly limp as he'd done when he'd passed out.

"'S- cold." Shawn's teeth chattered and it broke Henry's heart. It was usually his job to tell his son to suck it up but it was Mike's now albeit in not such a mean way.

"I know. Hey, Cal give 'em a break while I get a set of vitals," Mike hollered and the engineer shut off the hose looking relieved. The engineer looked like this was his least favorite task.

"One-oh-two and falling," Buzz's paramedic announced. "Time to go!"

"One—oh-three point four here, hit 'im again, Cal," Mike said with regret lacing his words.

Henry and Gus shivered as they held Shawn's legs and arms as Shawn squirmed before the meds took effect finally.

"C-cold, please st-stop – but you said – you said – I was h-hot – someone tell Juliet – that I'm hot. She doesn't n-notice."

With every gasp of cold from Shawn, Gus's heart broke a little more.

"Hey G – Gus, there's a fine line b-between cuddling and holding someone down so th-they can't get away," Shawn smirked as his entire body shivered.

Gus let a chuckle escape him. That was Shawn, joking through the pain.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Henry, Gus, Juliet, and the security guards were dismissed from their duties as soon as the ambulances with McNabb and Shawn were unloaded at St. Francis Hospital and the two men disappeared behind separate trauma room doors with the paramedics who would inform the doctors of the situation before leaving.

Lassiter's face held a tinge of green as he reminded Juliet that technically, McNabb was under arrest.

"They're taking him straight to surgery," Juliet said tiredly. "If he makes it, he'll be out for some time but we forgot to tell his doctors about his exposure to the drugs and God knows what else."

Juliet lead her boss to the duty nurse's desk and began the arduous task of explaining Buzz's condition prior to being shot and nearly boiled alive. After the nurse had spoken to detectives from Santa Barbara, she informed Buzz's surgical team of any further complications and then guided the dead-on-his-feet Lassiter to an examination room. Juliet made to follow the head detective into the room.

"O'Hara?" Lassiter said, wide-eyed as the nurse handed him a hospital gown. He gestured for her to leave. Juliet merely turned around as Lassiter removed his clothing which until now, he hadn't realized were covered in blood and wax.

"I just need a minute," Juliet whispered. "I can't face Henry and Gus right now. And if Shawn doesn't…"

"I'm not that lucky, O'Hara," Lassiter sighed without a trace of remorse evident but when Juliet turned around she caught him swipe suspiciously at his eyes.

The nurse turned Lassiter's hands over in hers and instructed him to hop up on the exam table. She left the room only to return a minute later with a set of scrubs in her arms.

"I think you should change," the nurse instructed the exhausted-looking Juliet. "Use the patient shower down the hall but be quick."

"You'll be okay?" Juliet asked Carlton.

"'M not five O'Hara, geez," Lassiter practically squeaked.

Juliet nodded and left.

XXXXXX

Shawn's eyes shot open as the blood pressure cuff inflated on his upper arm. No one who was touching him was tall enough to be his attacker but the white uniforms all around him blended with the faces and bright lights above him. The _thump thump thump_ staccato of his heart and the swoosh of still-too-hot blood pumping thickly through his veins set his teeth on edge. His brain kept receiving messages like a broken computer as he tried to feed it information – how many hats – how many people in the room – Does Juliet know your secret? _Error – Error_…

A/N No, Yin's not done yet and Santa Barbara's finest will have to figure out how to proceed out of their element while in Los Angeles. Until next time, thanks very much for the alerts, reviews, and favs, they are much appreciated. Please review if you can.


	5. Chapter 5

As Henry made his fifth lap around the nurse's station waiting for word on Shawn, Gus was jolted out of an exhausted, horror-filled stupor by the ringing of his work cell. He threw the offending object from himself like a poisonous snake until he realized that the glares of annoyance from others waiting in the E.R. of the busy L.A. hospital were for him. He tried to look apologetic as he hastily picked up the still ringing phone but couldn't manage the dexterity to turn the damn thing off with his still shaking hands. His once prized possession would soon be evidence in a cardboard box in the possession of the LA.P.D., he thought with some satisfaction. West Coast Pharmaceuticals would not be getting their employee-issued, very expensive phone back anytime soon and it served them right.

Henry paused in his muttered rehearsal speech to Lassiter, Juliet and Chief Vick to please not be angry at Shawn's deception, to please listen to why he'd done what he had and to see that it was actually noble and not some cheap con. He gently took the cellphone from Gus and turned it off.

"If they can't see that Shawn was only trying to help them all these years, they're not who we thought they were," Gus said quietly of the Santa Barbara P.D. "Besides, Shawn and I can find a new job."

Henry nearly smiled at Gus's stressed regression back to his and Shawn's childhood. The two really couldn't see a future without the other in it.

"So they did fire you?" Henry asked wearily.

"Yeah, they're going through my sample case now. They never even gave me a chance to explain that McNabb wasn't acting on behalf of Santa Barbara P.D.. They said if anything is missing they will prosecute me for theft and leave the trafficking charge to the cops. About the only thing they're going to find missing is some tapeworm deworming medicine that Shawn stole to plant in that nasty model's bathroom medicine cabinet for her noisy co-models to find."

"Why would Shawn go and do a thing like that?" Henry asked, dreading the answer.

"Because she insulted him, said he couldn't possibly have been a model, even a hand model back when we were investigating the agency she worked for when we posed as supermodels, Black and Tan. I mean, I don't think Shawn would have done it just for that personal insult but it was what she did next. She called our waitress at the bar fat and suggested that she stop sampling the food before she brought it to the customers and then made pig noises. Shawn found the waitress crying behind the bar and cheered her up by telling her that the model kept thin by swallowing tapeworms and only drinking Metamucil. Come to think of it, Shawn stole a bottle of that too. Shawn told all the other models he saw her swallow tapeworms before their last shoot and now, voila, when the other curious models look in her medicine cabinet, they will find the evidence of her trying to get rid of the worms after the shoot. Not sure what he did with the Metamucil, but he said something about pouring the whole bottle into her toilet and come to think of it, I did see a plumber's van parked outside the next day."

"Shawn never did like a bully," Henry said slaking his head sadly. His son had spent the better part of his life getting under people's skin but he was a decent person who didn't deserve any of what was happening to him and now his best friend was being dragged down with him.

"Well, on the bright side of things, tapeworm medicine and Metamucil are hardly trafficking drugs," Henry pointed out.

"You'd be surprised. Do you know what the most stolen drugstore item is? It's Preparation H – you know, the hemorrhoid cream. People don't want to take butt cream to a cashier so even rich people steal it."

The small talk was awkward but welcome, even more so for the fact that Shawn would have found hemorrhoid cream talk hilarious if he was with them. But it was all too real, the wailing sirens outside, the squeaky gurney wheels, the antiseptic smells and soon there was only here and now. Henry resumed his pacing and Gus reluctantly put the work cell back in his pocket for when it would be called into evidence. Gus approached Henry to offer to get coffee.

XXXXXX

"Do you think McNabb really told Juliet about Shawn's secret?" Henry asked. Gus wondered how Henry even heard or saw him approach on his way back from the coffee run, since Henry was back-to, but then again, the man had taught Shawn everything he knew about tapping into alternate senses.

Gus wanted to say no, but Juliet _had_ been all business back at Tussaud's and hadn't made a move to comfort Shawn or even glance at him once he was free of the wax. But then she did have Buzz bleeding-out to contend with. It was all Yin's fault that any of them had to worry about this and Buzz's haunted words about being left to die for an hour on the parking garage floor mere weeks back played back for Gus like a recording. How easy it was to plant false impressions of neglect or caring. Gus's stomach ached and he beelined for the men's room to throw up just as he'd forbade his squeamish self from doing when he had a tangible job to do. Waiting was harder.

XXXXX

When Gus emerged from the bathroom stall, Henry was there to hand him a warm paper towel to drag across his face. He guided Gus to the sink to wash his hands.

"Show me your hands, Guster," Henry ordered, observing that Gus's hands were very slightly burned on the backs.

"The skin's just a bit tight, Mr. Spencer, not burned. I wasn't dipped, Shawn had a pretty good hold of Buzz and I just pulled him up out of the wax."

Knowing that Henry wouldn't take his word for it, Gus held his hands up for inspection. Henry took Gus's hands in his and turned them over. The skin was cool but flaked.

"I have some samples in my car I'll put on them soon, promise, I don't need to see a doctor or anything," Gus deflected. "I doubt burn cream is a trafficking drug either," he added bitterly, thinking of his immaculately kept drug case being unceremoniously inventoried.

"They seem like they'll be okay," Henry agreed but if anything changes you have to promise to say something, we've had enough misunderstanding for a lifetime," Henry said tiredly, further inspecting Gus's face for any signs that his son's best friend was hiding an injury.

Henry put his arm around Gus's shoulders and the two of them went back to the plastic chairs in the waiting room only to find that L.A.P.D. was there to take statements. Juliet was there in fresh scrubs, a plastic bag of her clothing in her arm held against her midsection like a shield. The duty nurse directed the group to a private room where they wouldn't upset others.

"How's Lassiter?" Henry asked as they walked by the closed outer doors that lead to the trauma rooms as if hoping to see through them.

"They're cleaning and wrapping his arms. They gave him something for the pain and he threw it up so when they went to give him a shot in the butt, he made me leave." Juliet smiled a sad smile at this revelation. "They have some special burn cream and they're hopeful Lassiter's arms won't even peel like a sunburn."

XXXXXX

Professional courtesy was evident as Henry, Juliet and Gus entered the improvised interrogation room at the hospital with the LA.P.D. Paper cups of coffee and random packaged cookies and sandwiches sat in the center of the table. The coffee was snatched up, the food stayed where it was.

The officers from LA had heard about the notorious serial killers, Yin and Yang and had been informed that like so many officers before him, Constable McNabb was a victim of the disgusting duo. Protocol still had to be maintained; McNabb was under arrest pending full investigation and test confirmations and interrogation, providing he even survived. A judge had granted a full blackout ban on publication of any details and as far as the press was concerned, miraculously, the public frenzy over famous people had concealed the much more interesting, horrible truth of what happened at Tussaud's.

XXXXXXXXXX

Shawn struggled against the restraints someone had placed on him as he lay with icepacks placed near his groan, under his armpits, behind his knees and neck. Someone clamped a hand on his forehead and pulled at his ear. to extract the paraffin.

"Y-you'd better have san-sanitized that alien probe for my protection," Shawn rasped. "And it – it better not be the anal probe – that's my ear you're knee deep in."

"Still has a sense of humor," was the first thing Shawn heard a male voice say as pain exploded with sound in his left ear.

"Shawn, can you hear me?" the same voice said.

"Y-yes," came the tentative reply.

"Okay, good. Now I'm going to have to ask you to stay still as you can and if you can do that, I promise to keep the probing to a minimum, is that a deal?"

Shawn was shocked into compliance with the response to his sarcasm as he felt as if he was thrown against a wall of sound as his right ear was cleared of wax too. The sudden onslaught of beeping, his own ragged breaths from a cooling blanket being applied to his entire body and voices all around him was too much as his brain tried to match sounds with no visuals to back them up.

"BP's spiking," a female voice said.

Shawn felt something cold pushed into his IV port and within seconds he couldn't lift his head but he didn't care.

"Eye – my eyes …" Shawn said as he felt them close and the only difference was that the shadows disappeared.

"Going to do everything we can," was the last thing Shawn heard as he drifted off to the sound of his slowing heart and something about getting a fresh set of vitals.

XXXXXXXXXX

Henry Spencer stood up along with Gus as a doctor called for Shawn's family.

'I'm Dr. Tobias," the man greeted Henry and the two shook hands.

"How's my son, doc?" Henry asked after introducing Gus.

"From the information we received prior to assessing Shawn, I'd say he is very lucky in terms of burns and lasting skin damage. The wax formed a seal on his skin and while it obviously compromised cooling measures, Shawn was spared internal organ damage from hyperthermia. He'll experience some peeling from directly exposed areas and irritation from more protected areas but we're concerned with his eyes now that his temperature is coming down. We don't have all his lab reports back yet but once he's fully stable, Ophthalmology will have a look at him. In the meantime, we're continuing cooling measures and started Shawn on antibiotics to ward off infections. Shawn's breathing is a concern and I want to stay on top of that in case he aspirated some wax into his lungs so we're sending him for a scan and monitoring his blood oxygen levels.

"So, he's not out of the woods yet?" Gus asked, stacking all the positives and negatives the doctor had told them into medical Tetris-like columns in his head.

"We'll know more when all of his labs and scans are completed but so far, Shawn is a fighter – even accused us of probing him," the doctor said with a shake of his head.

"Can I see him?" Henry asked.

The doctor checked his watch. "Shawn is sedated. Radiology will be expecting him in ten minutes but a few minutes wouldn't hurt. Keep in mind he can hear you now and he seems overly agitated by loud noises."

XXXXXXXXXXX

"Ah, kid," Gus heard Henry say under his breath. As they followed the doctor into the trauma room, Henry tried to explain Shawn's unique perspective of sight and sound.

"No wonder he felt like he was going to be probed," the doctor whistled upon hearing that Shawn was hyper-observant. "I'll be sure to let the ophthalmology team and radiology know."

"Dad?" Shawn asked, his eyes roving under the thin, cotton pads placed over them.

Henry gave an _I told you so_ look toward the stunned doctor.

"Hey, kid," Henry said as he searched for a place on his son's body to lay his hand. Shawn's arms were shiny from ointment from his bicep to his fingertips, but Henry was relieved to see for himself that the skin was pink but unmarred. His face was similarly covered, the ointment disappearing into Shawn's waxy hairline and lined under his nose where the nasal cannula provided oxygen.

"Gus?" Shawn said, his eyebrows arching in question behind the bandages.

"It's me, Shawn," Gus confirmed.

"I - I don't like – this spa, Gus," Shawn tried to joke, his voice breaking with the effort. "I asked for -c-cucumbers for my eyes, not – gauze. Can't eat gauze."

"Yeah, I know, Shawn. Lassie's not liking it much either, lost all the hair on his forearms and he was kinda mad when I suggested he should have his sternum bush waxed to match," Gus said.

Shawn's lips turned up in a small smile.

Henry put his hand gently on his son's shoulder as the nurse swapped out the cooling blanket for a thin, white sheet.

"Temperature one hundred point four, doctor," she announced.

Henry's sigh of relief was evident. Shawn's right hand rose and Henry took it Mary-Lightly-like, Shawn looked so fragile.

";M'okay," Shawn said but it sounded more like a question. "No one will – tell me – about Buzz."

Henry looked at Gus and Gus nodded in the affirmative. Shawn needed the truth, he'd hear deception if they lied.

"McNabb's in surgery He's under arrest for what he did to you – I mean…"

"No – dad, Buzz didn't – he was…" Shawn's heart monitors sped up.

"Whoa, hey, we know, Shawn. It's been a lot to digest in the last four hours. Henry wished he'd been able to keep his contempt for Yin out of his voice when he spoke of Buzz being used as the murderer's puppet. "McNabb's a victim here, don't worry, we'll work it out, I promise."

"Okay, radiology is ready," the nurse announced as a portable X-ray was wheeled in.

Gus reached over and lightly spiked a tuft of Shawn's bangs. "Couldn't have you ready for your closeup looking like Max Headroom, Shawn. Dude's hair looks like it was manufactured in the playdough hair salon."

"Thanks, Gus – Dad? You uh – stayin' around?" Shawn asked forcing himself to sound casual.

"Right here, kid," Henry said past the lump in his throat as she stepped out for the X-rays to be taken.

XXXXXXXX

"I had a cousin who was a roofer," Gus told Henry as they stood outside the trauma room door. "He got tar in his eyes and he was really lucky, the damage healed, he went back to twenty-twenty."

"Thanks, Gus," Henry said putting a hand on Gus' shoulder.

Juliet approached Henry and Gus just as both men leaned against the wall.

"How is he?" she said quietly.

Gus visibly paled upon seeing Juliet's scrubs again, remembering how only a short time ago, she'd been covered in Buzz's blood and wax.

"We're waiting on a few more tests but he's definitely more comfortable now," Henry told Juliet, relief evident in his voice. "But his eyes – he can't see yet, just shadow and light. Might need surgery on his left knee too."

Juliet nodded and helped Henry and Gus hold up the very capable hospital wall.

"How's Lassie now?" Gus asked.

Juliet smiled. "Grumpy. They want to keep him for a few more hours for observation and rest. After the meeting with L.A.P.D. the nurse reminded him he was only on loan to them and needed to be checked out one more time before he could be released."

When the portable X-ray was wheeled out, the nurse stepped back inside the trauma room and informed the waiting trio that the ophthalmologist was about to arrive so they only had a few minutes left to see Shawn.

Shawn's brow was covered in a fresh layer of sweat and his lips were set in a grim line of pain when they re-entered his room.

"The X-Ray techs made you do the _paint-me-like-one-of-your-French-girl _poses, eh, Shawn?" Gus said.

"Used a – school-picture-blue background for the photo shoot, too, Gus. It was – horrible."

"How's your pain level, Mr. Spencer, one to ten?" the nurse asked, turning up the oxygen slightly and adjusting the nasal cannula.

"Purple," Shawn sighed.

"Got it," the nurse said. "I'm adjusting your morphine. I want you to try to breath and relax. You're doing well, your temp's down so that'll keep the probing to a minimum, so that's good, right?"

Henry could have hugged the nurse. Her easy mannerisms were just what his son needed.

"Oh, and Shawn here promised me to tell you that he was hot," the nurse told Juliet.

"Not -wh-while I was - _here_," Shawn complained as his taut features relaxed as the morphine kicked in once again.

"No more purple?" the nurse asked.

Shawn didn't answer but his heart rate evened out and his hand slackened in his father's grasp.

"I'll take that as a no and you'll have to take your leave. Shawn will be with the ophthalmologist for about an hour. I gave him enough morphine to comfortably undergo some of the tests the specialist will want to run and he'll be aware enough by the end to answer some questions. In the meantime I strongly suggest you should go get something to eat. I'm on duty with Shawn here until eight o'clock. He's in good hands."

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I demand to know where my son is!" a tall man boomed across the desk at the frazzled looking nurse in triage.

"Mr. McNabb!" Juliet called, subconsciously swiping at her scrubs that had replaced the clothing covered in his son's blood. The relieved nurse handed over enquiries to the scrubs-clad officer.

"I don't know if you remember me, I'm Detective Juliet O'Hara, I work with your son in Santa Barbara. I was at Francine and Buzz's wedding."

"My daughter-in-law told me you'd be here but we haven't had any answers. They wouldn't even tell us if our son was al-alive," Buzz's distraught father said in a rush of anger and fear. "They said some nonsense, that he was under arrest so they couldn't tell us anything."

Juliet cringed. Buzz's petite, dark haired mother was just coming out of the room Juliette had last seen Lassiter in. Lassiter followed on her heels looking upset.

"O'Hara, where are the buffoons from L.A.? McNabb's parents deserve to know what's happening with their son."

"I'll find out, Carlton, promise. Go back and rest and I'll report in a few minutes," O'Hara said.

"Mr. and Mrs. McNabb, we'll be right back. This is Henry Spencer and Burton Guster, they both work with your son on occasion and they'll show you the room we've been given for uh – waiting." Lassiter told his young officer's parents. _So we don't upset the public…_

Looking very lost, Mr. and Mrs. McNabb followed Henry and Gus down the hall, keys still jangling in Mr. McNabb's hands.

"You parked in the drop off, didn't you?" Henry asked the very tall Mr. McNabb.

"How did you know?" McNabb's dad asked.

"Because I have a son too," Henry answered, holding back the fact that his son was here _because _of Buzz – or rather with Buzz – as victims.

"Gus, could you?" Henry asked, pointing at Mr. McNabb's car keys.

"Mr. McNabb, I'll park your car, that lot you're in will get you towed away," Gus said kindly, glad for something to do away from this mess. Mr. McNabb handed over the keys with a description of the car and thanked Gus profusely.

"We just don't know what's happening, why our son is here. Poor Francie's sick – is our son sick? why is he in L.A.?" Mrs. McNabb began firing even before they reached the makeshift interview room.

XXXXXXXXXXX

"It would have been nice to have a head's up that poor McNabb's parents were on their way," O'Hara groused.

"About that," Carlton said, sounding guilty. "I may have fallen asleep from anti-nausea medicine and missed Chief Vick's calls."

Juliet checked her phone, finding out that she too had missed several calls.

Lassiter's long legs usually had Juliet taking huge strides to keep up with the head detective. She slowed her pace as he walked near the walls where from time to time, his hand grazed the railing for support.

"Carlton, you're still technically a patient, you're supposed to be resting. I can talk to the guys from L.A.P.D.."

Lassiter turned to his partner and she saw for the first time that he'd pinned his badge to the waistband of the scrubs he had begrudgingly been given after he'd refused to wear a hospital gown. Juliet put her hands up in surrender. As they neared Buzz's trauma room, they noticed that the officers standing in front of his door were not the same ones who had interviewed them hours earlier.

"Officer Legault, Officer Timmins," Juliet began, squinting at their name tags and introducing herself with the assumption that the officers had been briefed. "We have a delicate situation, you see, Officer McNabb's parents have come all the way from Santa Barbara. They're worried sick about their son and they can't get any information on his condition as he's technically in custody and the hospital can't release information on – _inmates._" Her final word felt like gravel in her mouth.

"McNabb isn't _technically_ under arrest, he _is _under arrest," Legault said, raking his eyes over the scrubs clad and exhausted detectives.

Lassiter was having none of it. Not expecting any sudden movements from the bandaged and out-of-jurisdiction head detective, Lassiter easily sidestepped the two burly officers into Buzz's room. Before Juliet could see over her taller boss's head, her fears were confirmed.

"I'm going to ask just once," Lassiter said in measured anger between his teeth. "Where is _my _officer?"

XXXXXX

"Sir! Sir, you can't go in there," a nurse yelled from behind a desk at the entrance to the surgical suites.

Not getting nowhere with the two officers from L.A., Lassiter walked with renewed anger back the way he and Juliet had come, Juliet's phone in his hand, speed dialing Chief Vick.

"O'Hara, how is, Mr. Spencer and Officer McNabb? No one has -" Vick began immediately upon answering on the first ring.

"Chief, it's Lassiter, _I'm_ fine by the way – It's McNabb we're calling about. L.A. is refusing us access to information on his condition and his parents just arrived."

"What? Damn it, we had an agreement with L.A.'s chief; let me call you back; and Carlton? I'm sorry I didn't ask about you, it's just that you're always so – I don't know - invincible? We're always worried after Spencer and McNabb because they're young and impulsive, you know that, right?"

"Got it, Chief, thanks," Lassiter said as he and Juliet made their way back to where the McNabbs awaited word on their son.

XXXXXXXXXX

Shawn's eyes watered heavily as he withdrew his head impossibly further into his pillow as the ophthalmologist shone blindingly bright lights into what felt like his brain through his eyes. Fear pulsed through the detective like a tangible entity.

What if his blindness was permanent? His gifts, such as they were, were not fake like the psychic label everyone forced on him. And they were the only things upon which he could rely to represent himself to the world who would otherwise think him quite useless. He was never into school like Gus, could never really tow the line because he could always see the frays in it. His senses made him who he was. Without them, there was no Psych, no spending days with Gus, no secret pride from his father. No working with Juliet.

"So, Doc, will I ever – play the violin again?" Shawn rasped.

The doctor was close to Shawn's face, shining a penlight into his eyes, so close that Shawn could smell the blueberry bagel the man had about an hour ago according to the strength of the smell.

"You play the violin?" the doctor asked but it didn't sound like a question. "I don't see any string callouses on your hands."

"Wait – how did you…" Shawn gasped.

"You're not the only one who's observant, my friend," the doctor laughed. "Your father told me about your unique abilities and then he said I shouldn't hurt you. So, was he like, a marine? drill Sargent? cop?"

"Yes," Shawn nodded to all three. The smile in the doctor's voice was evident and Shawn was grateful for the man's easy demeanor.

"You can fix 'em – my eyes? Right?" Shawn heard the desperation in his own voice and tried to swallow it.

"Nope," the doctor said as he turned the overhead lights back on, but before his very scared patient could become distraught, he finished. "They're already on the mend and will continue to heal on their own. You should be back to twenty-twenty in about three weeks give or take. That's not to say that down the road as you age you won't be more at risk for cataracts and other problems but if you see your eye doctor regularly to keep an eye on things, I expect you'll – play the violin expertly very soon. And I'll see you before you're released a couple more times."

The tears that leaked from Shawn's eyes had nothing to do with the eye drops or the special lights. The doctor placed a hand on Shawn's shoulder. "So obviously no driving until you're cleared, and you should probably lay off the _violin_ until your hands heal," the doctor laughed.

Shawn heard the doctor pivot and the chain to the light on the X-ray light box on the wall rattled in his hand. 'That's curious," the doctor said.

"What's – curious?" Shawn asked, his fear ramping up again.

"Well, I have a white light in use to check the dyes I placed in your eyes. I was focused on your eyes but just now I noticed your chest, there's a glowing symbol only visible with my light when I turned off the lights in the room…"

Shawn closed his eyes despite that fact that the action was moot as he was blind. His brain went on fast forward – well fast backward – _the mime_ – Shawn hadn't paid much attention at the time since the mime had been on top of him but there was a second when the man had used his hand to push off of Shawn's chest…"

"Is it the um - the Yin and Yang symbol?" Shawn gulped.

"It's hard to tell with the heart monitors and smudging from the wax I was told you'd been immersed in but yes, I believe it is," the doctor said. "Were you at a glow-in-the-dark party or something?"

"Party for one," Shawn said grimly, eyes widened against their blindness. "Doc, listen, this could be life or death, I can't explain but you were right, my dad is a former cop, there's two Santa Barbara detectives here and I work with the department too. That symbol – it means ev – everyone here at this hospital could be in danger. Please – please get my dad – I mean, I mean, please get any of the cops. Tell them the mime…"

Shawn managed to sit up and swing his legs over the bed, gasping in agony when the support his knee had from carefully placed pillows was lost. He pulled the nasal cannula from his nose and was about to disconnect his IV. It was all he could do not to swipe at the invisible symbol on his chest that his imagination felt burn into his ribs now that he knew about the invasion.

"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" The specialist asked, ordering Shawn to stay put as he pressed the button on Shawn's bed to call a nurse. "Okay, here's the deal, I get one of the cops down the hall, you lay back down, hands off the IV and don't move."

"Got it," Shawn said through gritted teeth.

Shawn sat back up once the shadow of the doctor was gone.

"Shawn, what's this about a mime and the Yin/Yang symbol -" Henry stopped dead in his tracks, Gus bumping into his back as he took in the gasping form of his seated son.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Henry gasped, taking only two strides to reach Shawn. The nurse entering the room shortly thereafter followed by the eye specialist. was no nonsense and insisted that Henry converse with her very ill patient from a distance while she attended to getting him settled again.

The specialist, sensing this was a very important revelation, complied when Shawn asked him around the thermometer that had been unceremoniously placed under his tongue, to please show the Yin/Yang symbol on his chest to his father and Gus. The doctor gently pulled the sheet down to Shawn's waist.

The nurse's foot could be heard tapping in frustration as the lights momentarily shut off and the glow of the symbol on Shawn's heaving chest became evident.

"Oh, God," Gus whispered and he wordlessly complied with Henry's request that he go find Lassiter and Juliet and warn L.A.P.D. to place extra guards around McNabb and his doctors.

"I'm sorry, dad," Shawn gasped. "I didn't – n-notice. We ran – right into him, at least, it was – it was the same body type as the night on – the pier. He was right in – my grip. I had 'im. I let – I let him go – but there was no way I – I mean there was no – wine – that was the only way I knew before when Buzz said -"

"Mr. Spencer, I'm going to need you to try and calm down for me, okay?" the nurse soothed. "Your blood oxygen is dropping, and we don't want you to go into shock."

The ophthalmologist recognized that he'd established a repour with the distraught young man and as he was his last patient in his very long day, he stuck around.

"Okay, Shawn, nice deep breaths for me," the doctor soothed, holding an oxygen mask to Shawn's reddened face.

"Henry tried to stay out of the nurse and doctor's way and his words of comfort to Shawn didn't seem to be reaching him anyway. It was hard to hear past the increased beeping of his son's monitors and heartbreaking when they were forced to slow with a well-placed needle into Shawn's hip from the nurse. Henry soon saw why she had chosen intramuscular instead of Shawn's IV port, Shawn had finally succeeded in taking it out to try to untether himself to finish the job of getting rid of Yin once and for all.

Gus returned, confirming that he'd informed Lassiter and Juliet and proceeded talking very fast, explaining about the mime.

"When we were at Madam Tussaud's, we ran into this mime. We thought it was random, but he must have been watching us the whole time and positioned himself in our way. Shawn knocked him over and it must have been then that he planted the invisible symbol on him. It must've gone right through his shirt. I told the chief about the pamphlet with the symbol that I was handed by a woman near Ripley's but we figured she was just a minion, - but Yin's really here – in L.A. I feel so stupid," Gus fretted.

"Gus if Shawn didn't know about Yin then there's no way you could have, You said yourself if you hadn't balled up the pamphlet in just the right way, the symbol wouldn't have been noticeable anyway, It was another riddle, like those infernal origami flip things with random words you and Shawn used to make when you were kids." Henry said. "Now you need to stay here and do not leave this door until we get some backup to guard Shawn. I'm going to watch the main doors until Lassiter and Juliet have more guards on McNabb." Henry pulled his old service revolver from his jacket and held it discreetly out of sight as he disappeared into the hallway.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Lassiter punched Buzz's empty hospital bed in the recovery room where he'd been told ten times he did not belong. He angrily pushed the buttons on O'Hara's cellphone extra hard as an orderly dumbly told the angry man that cellphone use was prohibited in surgical suites and recovery rooms. Lassiter noted that there were no patients at all in the recovery area.

"M -C- N-A-B-B for the fifth freaking time!" Juliet spelled at a security guard who stood punching letters into a computer keyboard. "He's supposed to be in recovery!"

The double doors to the recovery ward opened with a bang and both L.A. officers who were assigned to incarcerate McNabb poured in looking mutinous. "What have you done with our prisoner?" Legault demanded. "If you've helped him escape just because he's one of your –"

Lassiter was saved from his fantasy of shooting the guy when the man joined him in breaking the cellphone ban by picking up his own ringing phone. The cop paled and stuttered a string of _yes sir, no sir, right away sir, I understand sir, and finally, we'll find 'im sir,_ confirming Lassiter's worst fears. Buzz McNabb was taken from the recovery ward after major surgery to remove the bullet from his chest and only God and Yin knew where the gravely injured man was now.


	6. Chapter 6

"Lock this whole place down! If my officer is not back in this bed in fifteen minutes very much alive, you're going to be on guard duty for Elvis, and I don't mean the impersonator. Do I make myself clear?" Detective Lassiter yelled, his fingers cutting across his throat to make his point to the suddenly compliant L.A. cop.

"Crystal, sir," Legault answered. Whomever had been on the other end of his phone call had obviously not been pleased when Chief Vick called his superior about the missing patient/prisoner.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Gus' shoulders touched the door of Shawn's room as he stood guard in the hallway. Everyone looked suspicious to him and every time he spotted something that was black and white, his mind tried to discern hidden symbols as if Yin was in the very walls. He peaked into the room, shouldering the door open just a crack while still craning his neck down the hallways which seemed endless. The room was dark, and Gus's eyes hadn't adjusted from the bright fluorescents in the halls. He had been under the impression that the eye tests were completed so the darkness in Shawn's room was even more unnatural.

"Um, nurse? Doc?"

No one answered.

Gus turned and opened the door further, flooding the dark interior with borrowed light from the hall. The Ophthalmologist and the nurse lay silently on the floor. An IV dripped pointlessly onto an empty gurney, a flatlined vitals monitor glowed sickly green against the stark, white sheets and monitors hung disconnected everywhere.

There was a red button on the wall. Gus pushed it not knowing what it would summon but knowing that whomever took Shawn hadn't given his doctor or nurse a chance to push it. Gus hadn't realized that the trauma rooms had adjoining doors to the surgical suites; it only made sense not to wheel a grievously injured person past grieving relatives to surgery or – Gus didn't want to think of other places where that door lead but _morgue _stood out in his mind. Trauma cases often didn't survive.

Gus wanted to blow through the adjoining room doors, he opened it to call for help then forced himself to place his fingers on the pulse of the doctor then the nurse. Both were alive. Within the seconds he had to contemplate everything that flew through his mind, people in various uniforms sped into the room. Gus told them he didn't know what happened and disappeared through the only door his best friend could have been taken. As he broke rule number one of the hospital, he literally ran into Lassiter.

"Guster, you're supposed to be watching Spencer, what the hell are you doing here!" Lassiter yelled, his gun lowering to his hip.

"They – he – took Shawn – Mr. Spencer told me to watch the door from the hallway because that's where more points of entry and exit are and from there I could maybe see suspicious activity first but they – took 'im through the surgical suite adjoining door. I should have stayed in the room," Gus spluttered, his hand raking his head.

Lassiter wanted to yell. It wasn't Guster's fault but they didn't need another victim. Lassiter demanded Gus's work cell, damn the evidence.

"O'Hara, Shawn's missing, regroup to the surgical suites adjoining the trauma room area, we're going to do a concentrated sweep here. Get security set up at all entrances, exits and parking garages; no one in or out without screening including ambulances and workers."

Henry's hundredth apology for invasion of privacy was on his lips as he searched everywhere from Labor and Delivery to Proctology rooms when he got the call that Shawn and Buzz were missing and headed back toward the surgery suites, his heart in his throat. His son had no fight left in him and McNabb…"

XXXXXXXXXXX

Shawn's chin hit his chest and he jarred to wakefulness, his feet scraping cold linoleum as the wheelchair he was in occasionally rubbed its gravelly wheels against his heels. He dumbly tried to place his feet in the rests but with a thrill of horror, his feet disobeyed his command to rise. His brain caught up soon enough with his body that nothing was right. His body was flung left as the wheelchair turned right and shock had him counting the only things he could see. Areas of bright and dark above him zooming by quickly.

One fluorescent bulb.

Two fluorescent bulbs.

And on they went as the hallways narrowed and the air lost that too-warm, antiseptic mugginess that always accompanied a trip to the hospital.

_Nineteen! Nineteen fluorescent bulbs ah, ah ah,_ Shawn's damaged brain counted Sesame-Street- Count-style.

_Count, count ze lights, Shawn; count zem with me"_the vampire Count from Shawn and Gus' childhood encouraged. So, Shawn did. With each turn the crazy ride took, he started a new count and he must've been making the Count's trademark _Uh! Uh! Uh!_ laugh too because someone cracked him upside the head and told him to shut up.

_Well that wasn't very nice. _

Shawn couldn't muster anything but calm detachment and obsession for counting between confused bouts of terror.

_But there's no hats here_, he thought. Dad's gonna be mad…

_Forty seven! Forty seven fluorescent lights! Ah, ah, ah! And we begin again!_ The cloaked Count said enthusiastically inside Shawn's head as Shawn's body was jerked right for the third time and his knees slammed into a door with crushing agony. Shawn was thrust into a cube of light where only the corners were dark and small blocks of interrupted light, head-height from his seated perspective were spaced four feet apart.

Shawn's panicked cough echoed, and he inhaled a familiar scent. His brain rewound of its own accord to his ninth-grade science room the day he and Gus released three hundred frogs into a nearby lake, thus earning them both an all-inclusive summer school package to repeat the course. The lake was even more spectacular for Gus and Shawn that summer as they stole a day off to save yet more frogs until the school finally agreed to let them draw diagrams of frog's innards instead of murdering and dissecting them. Shawn of course endured another round of science class for drawing _much_ too anatomically correct frogs.

_Formaldehyde… _

Shawn's lips felt as useless as his feet but his heart – it knew. He'd seen the first few frogs in the jars, the ones that overenthusiastic, sadistic students had gleefully thrown in along with wet, acrid smelling cotton balls. Shawn coughed harshly as something was waved under his nose. Smelling salts overwhelmed his sinuses, his nose dripping, his eyes streaming.

_Formaldehyde … jars … no … morgue!_

"C'mon Yin," Shawn slurred. "Itsssss cliché, man."

"And that would be your fault, Shawn," Yin said with measured calm. "You were to be immortalized in tribute of my daughter, Yang. I spent a week subliminally predisposing your idiotic friend, Guster to take you to Madame Tussaud's … phone ticket sale alerts, strategically placed assertions that a day away would be just the ticket to cure the blues and he fell for it."

"Wait – what were you going to…" Shawn gasped, the pain in his knee from being slammed into the door knee first catching up with his growing awareness of his body. He dragged his bare feet from the floor to rest on the metal plates of the wheelchair and felt them trail warm blood against the cold skin from scraping mercilessly against the wheels.

As his body thawed from whatever Yin had done to him, pain pricked at every nerve. His hyper sensitivity ramped up as though his veins were plugged into the national grid, causing a blackout to all but his hearing, smell, touch, taste and whatever sixth sense had cursed him with his gifts which he was going to demand a full refund for if he survived whatever freak show Yin had in mind.

Doors – no drawers opened and slammed shut, some with a dull thud, some with a hollow ringing.

And now Shawn knew – he was surrounded by the dead. But that wasn't right, because sudden gasping from his right indicated what Shawn could tell was a thin thread of life.

Shawn screamed hoarsely as a hand clamped onto the back of his shoulder. He tried to jerk his head around to see what disembodied ghost must surely be touching him but even if he could have made his body cooperate, lights and shadow were all that remained to him.

Yin laughed from across the room.

"Sh-Shawn?"

_Oh God. Buzz_.

For a second of insanity, Shawn was relieved, until the memory of Buzz hitting him in the chest with the barrel of his gun and threatening to tell Juliet his secrets and … his deadened eyes.

Shawn clumsily pushed the hand from him like a poisonous snake. Panic blanketed the fake psychic and he blocked out the sob of rejection from the hand's owner.

"L-look, Yin…"

"It's Mr. Yin, Shawn, we must always remember our manners. That was the one thing Yang admired about you, the manners in which your father instilled."

Shawn choked on revulsion. It had taken him years to figure out that Henry had not been torturing him with rules, but that he'd done the best he could – alone. But Shawn had never told his father that he knew that. And now he'd never get the chance.

Henry had put Shawn through hell, simulated kidnappings, hostage situations, robberies – _Kick the taillight out; Zig zag; Tell them what they want to hear,_ Henry had said. _Comply while figuring out what to do to survive."_

There would be no zig or zag or kicking anything. Shawn's left leg felt broken in two at the knee and throbbed in time to his speeding heartbeat.

The hand found Shawn's shoulder again.

"Shawn … m'sorry," Buzz sobbed in between gasps of pain and Shawn wished he couldn't hear the wet, gurgling noise that accompanied the strangled, pleading whispers.

"You bastard," Shawn gasped at Yin's bodiless voice as he forced his hand to find his shoulder and cover Buzz's hand with his own.

"You're disappointed that your little teddy bear came back after I got him wet after midnight?" Yin sneered. "I wasn't going to let you off that easy, watching – oh wait, you can't see – hearing him die as the monster I made him would have been too easy."

Footsteps sounded across the room toward him and Shawn braced but was bypassed.

"You disappointed me, Mr. McNabb. I was supposed to leave Tussaud's with a get well present for my daughter, Yang. Do you know how hard it is to preserve a human body in wax for presentation? – Neither do I but I imagine it would last longer than fresh cut, long stemmed roses. I mean, we could have thrown him out once he wilted, but Yang would have appreciated it just the same. In other words, Mr. Spencer was supposed to die. All you had to do was shoot him. You failed…"

"Wait! No!" Shawn yelled as Buzz screamed, his hand first clutching Shawn's shoulder, fingernails digging in with convulsive spasms. Shawn gulped in air and tried to lurch to his feet, shoving the wheelchair backwards against Yin's legs with the desired effect of hearing Yin hop on one leg cussing in pain. Even Shawn's ragged breathing from the effort stilled with shock as Yin counted to ten out loud to regain control.

The screams died and Shawn thought Buzz had died with them. He didn't know if it was better that pained panting and gasping replaced the screaming of agony. He didn't have any idea how to get out of here and he had no idea that upstairs, no bedpan was left unturned looking for he and Buzz. Hopelessness threatened from every corner.

XXXXXXXXXXX

The public address system continued to advise the public of special operations and conditions in the running of the hospital but never in terms anyone would be able to understand; it was all in code, no one said that there was a mass murdering madman holed up with two soon to be dead cops – and wasn't that a kick; now that Shawn was about to be murdered, he was suddenly proud that Lassiter had called him a detective what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Shawn," Buzz mumbled. "S - so sorry. Don't hate me – please. Tell, Francie – t-tell Gus. S=sorry. God, Shawn I…"

"You're going to tell – them – yourself, Nabby," Shawn said.

"Ten," Yin said with satisfaction at the end of his patience mantra. "See there's no need to yell at people to get them to do what you want, right Shawn? I mean all of your dad's yelling didn't do anything to reign you in and look at you now – well not _right_ now but you know, when you're doing your thing,"

Only McNabb saw Yin's imitation of one of Shawn's psychic visions he'd often performed at the station, fingers to his temple in mocking contempt.

_Tell him what he wants to hear_, Henry sounded in Shawn's head. Yin would never know that at this very moment, Shawn wished Henry would yell at him, tell him to use the force or some such nonsense – no wait, that was Gus's voice in Shawn's head.

"Yeah, my dad's a real dick," Shawn said, the words spoken so many times before but never as untrue as right now when they couldn't be taken back.

"The prodigal son rebels," Yin said appreciatively. "But enough chatter. McNabb failed to get me what I wanted but you know I never lose; balance must be maintained. Heat – cold, Yin, Yang, both will kill you and it is balance I suppose…"

Shawn heard the cadaver locker doors open with NCIS quality sound effects. "You see, people die as I direct them, not by my hand. I may have let McNabb live if he'd just done what he was told but now I'm afraid it's one more life to add to the list and after this I'll have to think of something to balance that out, very tiresome, McNabb," Yin scolded tiredly. "Shawn's death was predetermined but yours offsets balance. "

Monologuing, Yin was monologuing.

_Yes!_

But Shawn didn't have full use of his body and he didn't see it when Yin turned around rummaging around in the drawers muttering disturbing phrases such as, _oh wasn't she a pretty one, must've been a car accident_, or_ oooh, someone should have paid his dealer._

Shawn felt bile rise in his throat. Yin was looking at the occupants of the drawer and there were sickly, wet thuds emanating from his direction.

"Shawn," Buzz gasped and the wet cough from the young constable didn't make Yin turn around apparently because after a pause, Buzz's hand gripped Shawn's shoulder again as if he was trying to ground himself.

It sounded hard for Buzz to whisper between the wheezing and with an involuntary smile, Shawn realized that Buzz was trying to cough-speak to him like he and Gus had done in school when they wanted to communicate without being heard.

Buzz's wheezes were unfortunately very real as his revelation widened Shawn's blind eyes with hope that hurt almost as much as the fear.

"S-stole 'is cell, Shawn," Buzz wheezed. "Tried – a couple'a times – t-to call out but can't get it – unlocked. 'S an old flip."

Shawn felt the cell pressed into his hand.

Buzz's sudden scream of agony sent vivid pictures through Shawn's practiced mind as to what must have happed as metal on metal screeched and clanged. Yin had let one of the metal drawers open fully and it had bumped into Buzz's gurney.

Shawn swallowed his empathy and fiddled with Yin's phone. Password … He stabbed blindly at the numbers and almost let out a cry of incredulity as the word _balance_ opened the cell to fleeting freedom. But the beep beep of every letter pushed could not be silenced with Shawn's finger's limited dexterity.

Buzz stopped screaming and Shawn feared the worst, but he heard the ragged breaths Buzz tried so pitifully hard to draw. He needed Buzz's eyes.

"Buzz, man, stay with me," Shawn pleaded. "You need to watch him."

"Can't – t-tired. Hurtsss, sorry." Buzz wasn't wheezing anymore, the last of his ragged breaths were involuntary, his body's last-ditch effort not to die.

"Buzz, I need you to make a – bit more noise," Shawn pleaded as Yin continued some banging and clanging of his own and now with added whistling of the graduation march, Pomp and Pageantry.

Buzz's silence sent ice through Shawn's veins and Shawn took that ice and put it into his next words.

"Figures," Shawn spat. "You got us into this mess, be a man and help me get us out."

"Eff you, Spencer," Buzz spat through another round of coughing.

_That's it, Nabby, stay mad, stay alive_, Shawn thought.

Shawn's brain sped through everyone's phone number that he knew. The most logical call would be to Gus. While his best friend would be looking for him, he would always pick up his phone or texts right away, even to an unknown number; the man had even dated a few times from wrong number connections.

Shawn's hands shook, the gooey burn cream was not easily wiped off his hospital gown and the phone would not go into silent mode. With every letter, a small beep was emitted, and Buzz wheezed loudly in time until a mutual rhythm of carefully conserved communication was established.

H _cough_ E _hack_, LP, Sha, Nab, Yin.

Shawn was about to type the word morgue when his fingers slipped on the rubberized buttons depressing some of the keys which embedded into the plastic holes and refused to pop back up. He groped blindly along them, his mind seeing the letters that were no longer available as his fingernails tried to coax them back up.

_Really, Yin,_ Shawn thought frantically, _you couldn't pop for a decent touch screen? _And then he realized he would have been screwed without sight with a touch screen anyway.

But he couldn't tell Gus where they were …

Shawn's heart raced. His father's voice inside his head told him to calm the hell down and think. His entire body locked in rigid pain and shook with cold. A slight whistle from Buzz's failing lungs accompanied Yin's incessant whistling. The last of the morphine left him but instead of clearing his head, his body warred with endless flashes of images that he had to physically force himself not to reach for. They weren't real.

Gus's face swam into his mind as if Shawn could actually see him. It was better times. They were five, sitting in Shawn's living room. Puppets danced across the screen of the black and white TV which Shawn complained about every two minutes.

"_Next time, watch that ridiculous, huge bird at Gus's house if you're going to complain about our TV, Shawn_," Henry groused. "_Anything good and educational is just fine in black and white." _

"_Yeah, in nineteen fifty,"_ Shawn muttered under his breath.

Shawn's eyes stung and burned, begging to close from tests and procedures the ophthalmologist had performed. The room grew colder. The more Shawn struggled to see the screen, the more his head ached and his heart pulsed in his head. The old wheelchair sounded about to pop a wheel as his body shook, the thin hospital gown doing nothing to protect him. He hadn't pressed _send =. _Begging didn't wake Buzz; he had no one to watch that Yin didn't turn around and catch him. He was as discreet as his shaking hands would allow and with no blankets there was nowhere to hide what he was doing.

Shawn lived between two worlds; the useless cell clutched in his clammy, aching hands. He closed his eyes, his body jumping with every loud clang and bang Yin made.

If only Gus were here to focus him.

"_Come on, Shawn, let's watch Sesame Street," Gus said excitedly._

"_Nah, it's black and white on my TV, Gus, it's lame."_

"_The Count's sort of black and white even on my color TV anyway and he's your favourite part," Gus prodded._

Shawn felt his chin hit his chest and bit his lip to force himself not to pass out; or would passing out be better? Yin was going to kill him anyway.

_Su-nny days sleeping the day away, friendly neighbours, that's where we'll meet, can you tell me how to get, how to get… _

_One! One left turn! Uh, Uh, Uh! One! One right turn! …_

_Hm, The Count had never counted like that before…_

Shawn gasped, his fingers groped clumsily over the numbers on the cell,

_Look around, son, what can you use to help you get out of here?_ Henry said in Shawn's head.

_Look around? Look? In case you haven't noticed Pops, I'm blind!_ Shawn spat.

_Then feel around for what you can use!_ Henry yelled. Not for first time, Shawn wanted to tell his dad to back the hell off, but then; _You're a genius, Pops_! Real Henry would of course never hear this. Shawn closed his eyes and let his fingers rove the buttons to find a way to communicate what he needed. The letters he needed were there.

"What have you done!" Yin screamed. And Shawn knew. Buzz was dead. He would never have let Yin turn around and catch him without warning him.

Shawn pressed the send button just before his head snapped back from a lip splitting blow out of nowhere sending his wheelchair over backwards. He fought for the wind that had been knocked out of him as his back connected with the floor through the thin plastic backing of the chair. Shawn heard Yin snatch the phone from the floor.

"You can't change this, Shawn. Now, be a good – or dead boy like Buzz here and stay put until I get back."

A lock clicked into place and Yin was gone, didn't take sight to figure that out. But he was coming back, and Shawn could only hope Gus could figure out his cryptic message.

"_Now you have to hide, son,"_ Henry groused in Shawn's head. _"But first you have to start breathing again."_

"Gah!" Shawn rasped loudly, his breath sucking in all at once as his diaphragm spasmed back to life.

_You have a few minutes of adrenaline now from Yin's attack, use it. What do you see? _

"I'm blind you ass-" Shawn screamed out loud.

_Watch your mouth, kid, I mean what do you see with your other sight?_

"You know I'm not psychic! Jules knows m'not…" Shawn sobbed, his back spasming from his sudden blow as blood trickled down his chin and froze in place.

_Close your eyes_

"Why!"

_So you can see, Shawn._

"M'scared, dad," Shawn admitted, sounding very small, his chattering teeth stinging his lips with every crash. "Wh-why – why Buzz, why…"

_Because you're the only one who can finish this, son. Now please, close your eyes and look around, see what you can use_

Shawn complied just so his dad would stop. He doubted there were any hats in this room. Dead people didn't wear hats, they weren't going anywhere but … _drawers._

_There you go_, Henry said. _Hide._

Shawn took as deep a breath as he could and pushed himself up. His knees ground into the cement floor and a rough metal drain that he tried desperately to ignore bit into his skin. He grabbed onto a thin mattress, his hand connecting with Buzz's leg. Shawn gulped. Buzz's body was still warm. He stifled a cry of agony as he stood, his left leg threatening to pull him down. His hands found their way to Buzz's neck.

_One! One faint heart beat! Uh, Uh, Uh Not dead!_

Shawn was going to tell The Count to shut up, but the vampire's company helped him focus in lieu of Gus.

Shawn limped over to the bank of metal drawers, tapping them to see if one sounded hollow or – full, but they all sounded the same. He bit his already bleeding lip as he pulled one open with more effort than he could spare. With one index finger, Shawn poked downwards.

_Gah! Not empty then. _

"Sorry," Shawn muttered stupidly as he forced himself to open the next drawer. He withdrew his hand several times before getting the courage to check for tenants again.

_Plane crash victim? _As timid as his touch had been, the unmistakable sound of crunchy ribs would be something Shawn would never forget for as long as he lived, so maybe five more minutes tops by the way he was feeling.

It was getting harder to think, harder to breathe. He hated that he missed the oxygen mask upstairs probably hissing away pointlessly onto his bed. Even with an open mouth, it was hard to pull a full breath. He could still taste wax, like he'd eaten ten sets of the red, sexy wax lips that were sold in candy stores when he was a kid. He opened another drawer. What he wouldn't give for a thirty-nine-and-a-half-inch pole right about now.

_Empty at last. _

Shawn used Buzz's gurney as a crutch and wheeled the tall man over to the empty drawer.

"Sorry 'bout th-this," Shawn hissed as he shoved Buzz off the higher gurney into the drawer in a tangle of arms and legs which he straightened as best he could and closed the drawer without rechecking for a pulse. It was one count he just couldn't make again. Too slow. Too weak.

Shawn opened the door of the morgue, apparently Yin had only locked it from the outside. Yin was nowhere in sight, but Shawn heard distant, metallic noises in the distance. He stumbled back inside the room feeling along the walls for a landline, anything, but there was nothing. If there were stairs, Shawn was sure he couldn't climb them. His ears were ringing, and his chest hurt and spasmed with his back. He knew he was doing more damage to himself, but he had to do something.

Shawn pushed Buzz's empty gurney down the hall, leaning on it for support as his left leg screamed in agony and shook. He couldn't feel his left foot and it dragged as he willed it to lift with every step.

_Hansel and Gretel 'im_, _Shawn,_ Gus told Shawn.

Hansel and Gretel, Gus, you're such a girl! Shawn groused gratefully.

_Okay, Die Hard 'im then_, Gus said.

Breadcrumbs?

_McClane was bleeding, Shawn, the bad guy followed his blood trail but McClane was ready for 'im…_

"Best Christmas movie, ever!" Shawn coughed.

_Your lip is bleeding, Shawn, so's your temple and your foot,_

"Oh!" Now that Gus had mentioned it, every time Shawn bent over to rest, the unmistakable drip, drip, drip of his blood hitting the floor was audible. Shawn consoled himself that it was a drip, not a gush but his feet slipped from burn cream and blood.

Dark shadows against white halls marked where doors were as Shawn felt his way around. He opened an unlocked door and his foot hit a pail of warm water that splashed onto his feet, the heavy, cleanser burning until he almost cried out. That meant a janitor was nearby.

"A-anyone here?" Shawn whispered but as no one had screamed at the sight of him, his assumption that he was alone was right. He couldn't call out; Yin was still around. Shawn hid the gurney in the room, knocking a broom that must have been reclining on the wall over into his head.

"That would never have happened to Val Kilmer or John McClane," Shawn hissed, vaguely wondering if his detachment from his body when the broom didn't hurt was good or bad but the knock had caused him to stumble onto a pair of large, rubber boots that industrial floor cleaner staff wore.

Shawn bent to pull the boots on, but dizziness spun him to the floor which turned out to be a good thing because there was no way he could have lifted his left leg into them anyway. The waxy cleaner stung Shawn's nose and his mouth dried with the memory of drowning in wax. He wretched and sure enough, wax passed over his tongue in a mad race to leave his stomach from where it had lived since he'd swallowed it. His vision narrowed out even the light and shadow he'd been ungratefully privy to until now.

_Go back, Shawn, and hide, you know how, _Henry shouted. _No zig zag, follow where you came from, don't retrace your exact steps, leave the one-way blood trail…_

_Oh, that's what the boots were for! Yin will think I pushed Buzz away and out of the morgue!_

Shawn grabbed the broom and used it as a staff, taking as much weight off his left leg as he could. His arms shook as he tried to squint out the door for a shadow against the flickering fluorescents. He had to take his chance; he just couldn't tell.

So he closed his eyes. _Left, right, right, left. _

He stood before the bank of morgue drawers sooner than he thought his battered body should have brought him.

_Was it bad that he no longer shivered? _

_ Turn the lights off, Shawn, right of the door like always, he'll think you did it on purpose and he'll follow your bloody prints going in the wrong direction, away from here,_ Henry advised.

"Ya could-could'a told me that – when I got back," Shawn sniffed.

Shawn groped for the light switch. There were levels of blindness and now Shawn's eyes tried to open wider searching even for the lights and shadows. There were no windows down here, only complete, all encompassing darkness. Like the grave…

Shawn tripped over Buzz's abandoned IV pole which pulled his hospital gown down off his chest as his fingers caught it from leaving him entirely. He caught himself, his hand gliding down the wall with the rest of him, hitting a box light used for autopsy X-Rays or something he mused. Purplish, white light emanated. A UV light used for biological evidence gathering - or glow-in-the-dark mini golf Shawn mused sadly, knowing he'd never play a game with his best friend again. And that's when Shawn's damaged eyes picked up the sliver of phosphorus against the all encompassing black. Yin and Yang's mark – on his flesh, still glowing smudged and watered down by wax, water and burn ointment.

"NO!" Shawn yelled, forgetting everything as he clawed at the hated symbol on his flesh.

_Shawn calm down, Henry told his son gently but firmly._

"Get it off! Get it off m-me!"

_Use it to your advantage_, Shawn. Use it! Gus said excitedly.

"It's not the force, Gus! Well, an evil force I guess…" Shawn said distractedly and suddenly grateful.

"Got it," Shawn said. In revulsion that threatened to release more wax or whatever else swam around Shawn's queasy stomach, Shawn wiped some of the fluorescent symbol from his chest. He placed his hand on the drawer that Buzz was in. He smiled sadly…

_And mark it with a B…_

Shawn groped for the light box he'd found accidentally. He didn't have a marker or anything to leave a clue. Shawn touched his temple and bloodied his finger. He smiled sadly as he drew an infinitesimal pineapple on the corner of the light box switch and shut it off, plunging the room into complete darkness once again.

He opened the drawer next to Buzz and marked an invisible S on it with the hand he'd swiped across his chest and got in and took as deep a breath as his throbbing lungs would allow and closed the drawer as if expecting it to be devoid of oxygen. And as this whole situation was complete BS, it was only fitting that those letters secretly marked his and Buzz's hiding spots.

XXXXXXXXX

"Lassiter, give me back my phone! The message is from Shawn, I know it is!"

Lassiter tossed the phone back to Gus after jotting down the caller/texter ID.

"Why the hell doesn't Spencer just tell us where he is then? Because it's not him, Guster, no matter how much you want it to be. How much we all want it to be. This is one of Yin's games, it's a riddle and it will lead us nowhere. Yin's trying to throw us off the track. For all we know, he could have taken Buzz and Shawn out of the building by now. And even if he didn't, this isn't Santa Barbara, it's L.A.. this hospital is twelve stories, has a basement and sub-basement…"

"Lassie, yell at me again about how big this place is," Gus demanded, jumping to his feet annoyingly, very Spencer-like.

"We don't have time for this, Guster, let me think, please just for one damn moment."

"Basements, sub basements…" Gus muttered. He looked at the message on his phone and left Lassiter to pore over floor plans he'd scared the hospital CEO into giving him.

"Gus, I know you want to find Shawn and Buzz but this isn't Scooby Doo, you can't just take off, you're not – we're not even an official part of the search team," Juliet told Gus, remembering how Gus and Shawn had bragged about their marathon Scooby Doo session when Shawn was recovering from his appendectomy.

"Just for the record, Juliet, Shawn thinks you're Velma-smart and Daffney-pretty, so right about now he's hoping that you'll help find him so that Old-Man-Yin will finally have to admit that he would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for us meddling kids."

Juliet slipped away from her boss. It wouldn't hurt to have a look around if Gus had a feeling, after all, the man had known Shawn since they were babies.

"What are you thinking, Gus?" Juliet asked as more and more of L.A.'s finest filled the hospital hallways.

"I got a glance at the floor plans. The elevator indications for the sub basement are floor - 0. Then there's just a bunch of R's and L's. Shawn is trying to tell us where he is, it isn't Yin. Yin is always on about specifics from Shawn's childhood and rhymes, not actual coordinates."

"O'Hara if you see anything, call for backup, "Lassiter ordered his partner without turning around as if he had eyes in the back of his head. "Henry and I will check the basement, keep in contact."

"Spencer," Lassiter called Henry who was currently listening in on some plans of action from the guys from L.A., "let's get a coffee."

"What, are you out of your mind? I'm not getting coffee while my son and McNabb are miss … Oh! Yes, I need coffee."

Henry stepped away from the officers and Lassiter told him about the possibility of Shawn being in either the basement or sub basement.

"Let's go," agreed Henry. "Those guys are still setting up perimeters and planning."

XXXXXXXXXXX

St. Francis was an old hospital. The sub basement hadn't been privy to the revitalization projects that had modernized the public areas. As the elevator dinged to a stop, Juliet and Gus waited for their eyes to adjust from the modern lighting in the elevator to the flickering old fluorescents that looked like they'd been rewired to fit into old gas lights. There was no antiseptic scent. Groaning and belching pipes lined both sides of the significantly narrower hallways and the ceilings were low.

"Chilly down here," Juliet whispered for reasons she couldn't fathom. The elevator door dinged closed as she and Gus stepped out and Juliet's hand rested over her sidearm. They stood still, listening as the elevator made its way back up. As they looked at Gus's phone for clues, the elevator dinged again and they both jumped from nervous tension and from the very real fact that a cold-blooded murderer lurked these halls somewhere in this hospital.

"Damn it, the door isn't opening!" someone said in the elevator.

"Lassie?" Gus squeaked once he'd calmed down.

"Yes, it's me, the elevator is stuck and it missed our floor, we're calling someone, go look for Spencer."

Gus took a deep breath. "Follow me," he said to Juliet who was about to retort but reminded herself that Gus was in tune with his best friend and probably the best lead they had.

"R'okay Shaggy," Juliet said to break the tension.

"You do know that makes you Scooby, right?" replied Gus gratefully.

"Yeah, and Lassiter would think of Shawn as Scrappy," Juliet said. "Get Buzz a blond wig and he could be Fred."

"Right, Left…" Gus said with each turn they took, trying door handles and peering into darkened, circular door windows that must've been around since the place was heated and lit with coal and gas. The panes were etched with time and near impossible to see through. There were rooms full of cleansers, floor stripping machines, and even an old iron lung that Gus made a mental note to check out later when, not if Shawn and Buzz were found safe.

It was like walking backwards through time, museum relics like wicker wheelchairs, ancient X-Ray machines, creepy old incubators that looked like easy bake ovens and even an old sign that read the very un-politically correct term, _insane asylum ward_.

And suddenly Gus wished Lassiter was here because he would have now been saying reassuring things such as, _when we find Spencer_, _I'm going to have him committed to the insane asylum ward. _To which Gus would reply that Shawn had technically been-there- and-done-that, albeit to the _mental health facility_ and under false pretences of a case even though Lassie did try to have him looked at while he was there.

"They could film a movie down here," Juliet whispered, her voice echoing, nonetheless.

Gus shuddered visibly. "That would be right up Yin's alley," he agreed as he suddenly stopped, uttering a gasp.

"Oh, no," Juliet said, picking up her pace and telling Gus to get behind her while she drew her gun and avoided trampling further on the bloody trail of footsteps that now disappointingly veered from the reassuring Lefts and Rights on Gus's cell.

"They're Shawn's," Gus stated solemnly. Before Juliet could ask, he added, "Size ten, crooked baby toe on the left, weirdly pointed big toe on the right."

They really had known each other since infancy.

"We'll get him back Gus," Juliet said, swallowing her revulsion as she told Gus to call for backup and kept her gun out in front of them.

"I've got my previous messages but no bars down here. How can they have no cell down here!"

"Keep lookout for a landline." Juliet said with forced calm, her hand steady.

They bypassed the rest of the lefts and rights listed on the message and followed the blood; Shawn's blood until they reached a janitor's room.

"Gus on the count of three, you flatten yourself to the left of the door out of the way. One – two – three - freeze!" Juliet shouted, banging the door open and stepping inside.

"Clear," Juliet told Gus as he slipped to the floor in a huge puddle of soapy water. "Damn it!" There was an old gurney with orange vinyl armrests and mattress on it. Close inspection showed a layer of dust and – more blood.

"Where can he have gone, there's no more tracks," Juliet said in frustration.

"I'm gonna retrace the lefts and rights," Gus said as once again, Juliet reminded him that he was to stay behind her.

XXXXXXXXXX

With a thrill of horror, Shawn uncrossed his hands where they were resting like a posed corpse. He tried counting sheep, but fought sleep because sleep meant death, he was bleeding, he was cold, Shock was setting in.

"B- Buzz?" Shawn chattered as the cold metal sipped more heat from his back. He didn't expect a reply but the silence that surrounded him was now inside him, threatening to absorb him. The hot tears that leaked from his eyes did nothing to warm him.

The door to the morgue opened.

"What in the hell…"

Yin was back. Not Gus, Not Henry, Lassiter or Juliet.

Shawn's hands narrowly missed banging against the top of his drawer as they flew to mask the scream that he choked back. He smothered his breathing, rapid, shallow and nearly useless to him as his head swam with colors that weren't there. His ears fought against the relentless ringing in his head and he heard the regular light switch being snapped on.

"Can't have gotten far with the gurney," Yin muttered, leaving again. There was no sound of the light switching off.

"No," Shawn sobbed. He reached up to push open his drawer. His hands clawed above his head for leverage. As hard as he shoved, the drawer didn't even shimmy.

"M'sorry, Buzz," Shawn choked. "I can't get us outta – this one."

"He would'a – killed us by now, Shawn – did your best."

Buzz's voice wrecked Shawn. To have come so far now only to die. And he wasn't sure if Buzz was inside his head or beside him. So he talked to him just in case.

"S'not okay," Shawn said stubbornly.

"Can't feel m'legs, Shhhh-awn, an – an you said snot," Buzz slurred. "Don't wanna die…"

So Shawn lied to him.

"Gonna be okay, Nabby, y'already died – twice; one more, you get a – free sub."

"P – pretty sure th-thass not how – it works, Shawn."

""I've heard it – both ways," Shawn told his neighbour.

The time in between Buzz's assertions that he wasn't dead, lengthened until he was silent once more and Shawn was left in the dark without ever having told the officer that he had other ideas about getting them out.

The darkness won.

Shawn's body temperature dipped, the thrumming in his aching head quieted. The formaldehyde mixed with death.


	7. Chapter 7

Juliet and Gus continued to follow what Gus hoped were coordinates from Shawn. The sub-basement was cold and Juliet drew her blazer tighter against her body before returning her hand to her holster.

"If I'm right, there should be a door around this corner," Gus said, holding his breath as a shadowed figure loomed across the grey linoleum in front of them. Juliet drew her gun, pointed downward but ready.

"Geez, lady, don't shoot!" An overall clad man with a bucket and mop perched on a disused, orange wheelchair cringed, his hands up in surrender to Juliet's demand that he freeze. The man withdrew an ID card from his pocket. Gus continued down the hallway saying, _left, right 3D_ and stopping at a door.

"It's the morgue, Juliet, that's where this lead," Gus called as he slammed his shoulder against the door like Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride trying to avenge his father. And Shawn would love that in Gus's head was; _Hello, my name is_ _Crouton Buster, you killed my friend, prepare to die_, over and over again as he threw himself at the door.

"I got a key," the maintenance man announced much too late for Gus's shoulder. I was jus' down in this area here to clean up some blood. Apparently some patient's wandering or something. Hope they find the poor guy soon. I called upstairs jus' now 'bout the blood and I've kept my eyes open, haven't seen anything else or heard nuthin', been moppin' fer hours with my headphones on. Is that why yer here?" the man drawled.

"Yeah, stay in front of me and unlock this door then step aside – please," Juliet instructed, gun still cocked.

"He ain't dangerous is 'e?" the man asked, hands shaking.

Juliet didn't answer. When the lock clicked, Juliet told the man to wait by the elevators and direct officers that he'd summoned.

"Yes ma'am," the man said, looking relieved to get away from the morgue.

Gus followed into the morgue after Juliet, who once again told him the room was clear, this time with disappointment in her voice to match Gus's stricken look.

"I was sure, Juliet. I was sure that Shawn had…" Gus leaned his head on the wall, his hand on his right bicep to try to quiet the throbbing pain from his run-ins with the door. He stared at the phone in his hands as if it had betrayed him, trying to fathom where he'd gone wrong in what he was sure were hints from Shawn in some horrible game of hide-and-seek. Dropping his hand to his side to rest his shoulder and nearly dropping the phone from his nerveless fingers, he looked up.

"Uh, Juliette? What does this look like to you?" Gus asked, pointing to the lightbox switch he'd just leaned on.

"A – pineapple, Gus that's a pineapple!" Juliet yelled. "drawn in blood," she added more subdued.

"This is an ultraviolet light used for evidence," Gus said flicking the switch on and off with a pen, not wanting to damage possible evidence.

"Wait! Juliet, turn off the lights!"

"Gus, we have to look for Shawn, every second…"

"Just do it!" Gus shouted uncharacteristically. So, Juliet flicked the light off, her hand subconsciously tighter on her gun.

Gus' white shirt and Juliet's white hair clip seemed to glow in the dark. Anything white lit up

"Juliet…" Gus's voice was barely above a whisper. He pointed wordlessly to the glowing letters, _B_ and _S _on the two drawers in the wall, the rest were unmarked.

Gus commanded himself not to pass out. This was every scary movie he and Shawn had ever watched and now they were starring in it.

Gus opened the drawer marked with an S while Juliet, gun still in hand opened the one marked with a B. Both let out a small scream. Juliet forced herself to look away, checking for dangers before setting her gun down on the autopsy slab and wrenching open Buzz's drawer more fully and placing her fingers on Buzz's neck.

"He's alive," she said shakily, "but not for long if we don't get him some help – Shawn?" She asked Gus.

Gus's chest heaved up and down and he blew out a breath. "Barely here, Juliet. I can barely get a pulse. He's so cold, at first I thought…"

Juliet looked around desperately. Backup was taking its sweet time; she surmised they might have had to go around to the stairs with the elevators not working.

There are sheets in that glass cabinet," Juliet told Gus, springing the shocked man into action. The glass doors to the linen closet were locked.

"Cover Buzz and turn around," Gus said, opening an autoclave and grabbing a shiny, metal hammer that he avoided thinking about its purpose. He broke the glass and grabbed stacks of sheets, shaking the shards loose to tinkle onto the floor where it bit into the rubber of his sneakers and crunched with every frantic step.

Gus padded the porcelain table and helped Juliet heave Buzz out of his drawer and onto the sheets.

Juliet swiped microscopes and beakers from a countertop onto the floor with her arm as Gus threw sheets onto the hard surface. They placed Shawn's limp body on it and quickly covered both men with yet more sheets for all the good it would do. Neither had any body heat to accumulate but anything was better than nothing.

Gus covered the metal head holder on the porcelain autopsy table before gently resting Buzz's head upon it but it still looked very wrong, especially after Gus carefully placed the young officer's arms over his abdomen from where they'd hung listlessly over the edge.

Juliet stuck her head out of the morgue door and spotted the janitor making his way back toward them.

"Elevator's still out," the man called out, but help's on the way. I'll meet them at the other end of the hall by the stairs to guide them here."

Closing the door, Juliet kept her gun by her side, pressing her other hand hard on Buzz's chest as blood blossomed through the fresh sheets that covered him.

"Wait, did he say, the elevator's _still _out? How would he have known … He said he'd been mopping for hours with his headphones on."

BAM! The door flew open suddenly and the "janitor" threw himself into Juliet's turned back. Juliet flew forward, knocking her head into the porcelain table, the gun clattering to the floor from her blood-covered, slippery fingers. Yin's gun was pressed into the back of Juliette's skull, her face jammed against the cold table.

"Disappointing, you know I'm beginning to think that women aren't cut out for these types of things. My own Yang for instance…"

But if Yin underestimated women, he underestimated Gus more.

"Don't move Y- Yin," Gus sputtered, standing up from his ducked position with Juliette's gun held in both his shaking hands.

Yin laughed.

"Mr. Guster, you are an esteemed pacifist. You wouldn't hurt a –"

But whatever Yin was saying for the next ten seconds fell on deaf ears as Gus relived watching his best friend suffer at the hands of this man, and all the while, suffering more for others, caring less about himself, begging for it _please stop._

Yin raised the gun toward Shawn, magisterial confidence in his posture, but he forgot the one thing he'd spent the last thirty years of his life on _– balance -_ Shawn and Gus balanced one another out; Without Gus, Shawn would never have started Psych and put down roots, Without Shawn, Gus would have rooted himself into a corner; sure maybe that would have been a nice corner office as a manager at a pharmaceutical building, but it was still a corner he would have hated and Shawn always made sure that no one ever put Gus in a corner. Gus smiled grimly at that movie quote. And the balance tallies continued in a flood of memories; Gus had steered Shawn toward Juliet despite the achingly slow progress and Shawn had helicoptered, or mini-golfed in to save Gus from leaping into yet another spontaneous marriage with a stranger.

Gus imagined he could smell the sulfurous release as Yin cocked his gun still spitting venom about Shawn.

"You see, Guster, Shawn left you in Ripley's because you've never been able to go the distance. You're a sidekick, a diversion for his superior intellect. I'm an expert on balance and now you will watch your friend die," Yin said, stepping forward and pressing the gun to Shawn's temple.

BANG!

Yin dropped his arm for a split second, turning to Gus as if really seeing him for the first time. Blood blossomed from the left-center of Yin's chest.

"Curious," Yin said quietly, his face a study in incredulity.

Juliet's nose and forehead bled as she got to her feet. Gus's hands were no longer shaking but for a second, it looked as though his mind had left the building.

Yin raised his gun again, this time toward Gus, the surprised look still in his wild eyes. Juliet lunged, sweeping Yin's leg just as Yin pulled the trigger and she rolled onto the bloody man and wrestled the gun from his hands which were already growing cold though he still breathed.

The door burst open.

Lassiter's gun flashed from Yin, who was now disarmed, to Juliet who nodded and showed her boss Yin's gun safely in her hand, to Gus, who stood unmoving, still holding Juliet's gun in his trance-like aim.

"Guster, give the gun to me," Lassiter said as Henry zip-tied Yin's hands together and pulled Juliet to her feet before making his way to his son. Juliet turned her attention back to Buzz through half-dazed vision.

"Gus. Give. Me. The. Gun," Lassiter commanded, his voice sounding more shaken than anyone had heard before.

Gus stared, unblinking at the downed Yin but Juliet's gun still pointed to where Yin had been standing as if his hands hadn't gotten the message that his eyes should have sent moments before.

It was clear to Lassiter's keen mind as he pieced things together based on everyone's position what had happened and damned if balance didn't suck sometimes. Gus had saved Juliet; Juliet had saved Gus.

"Gus, it's okay. It's over. Give me the gun and everything will be okay," Lassiter soothed, growing more frightened by the second as even Henry's voice from the other side of the room failed to elicit any recognition.

"Guster, I order you to put the damn gun down, now!"

Nothing.

Henry felt Shawn draw a pained breath as a tear leaked from his closed eyes.

"G – Gus?" Shawn whispered. "If ya p-put the gun down I'll – give ya a S-scooby snack."

Gus's eyes filled with tears, but his hand stayed rigid. He stole a glance toward the ghost under the sheets. Lassiter moved in behind Gus and wrenched the gun free as he swept Gus's feet out from under him. He tossed the gun to Juliet and quickly assessed Gus for gunshot wounds, letting out a relieved breath upon finding none.

"Tuck your head down toward your knees, Guster and take deep breaths," Lassiter said with more kindness than Juliet would have thought possible.

The pool of blood under Yin grew until Lassiter jerked Gus to his feet to avoid being swamped in it in his sitting position on the floor. Shards of glass fell mostly harmlessly from Gus's jeans as he stood. Yin did not cry out or beg for mercy or seem to suffer as no one wanted to admit, would have been poetic justice for all the pain and suffering he was causing. His last breath was quiet, his eyes fixed on Shawn in wonder and he died with a puzzled look on his face.

Perhaps that was all the justice they would get; The fact that Yin never understood balance though he'd spent his life trying to control it.

XXXXXX

L.A.P.D. finally stormed the dungeon, weapons drawn and shouting orders that were all too unnecessary.

Lassiter grabbed Gus and dragged him into the hallway. The smell of formaldehyde and the loudly barked orders had done nothing to wake Gus from his stupor.

"Guster, listen to me." When Gus didn't respond, Lassiter slapped him in the face, eliciting little response save for Gus's watering eyes riveting to focus somewhat on his face as if reading his lips instead of hearing him.

"I want you to go upstairs, get that nice nurse to give you a pair of scrubs like she did for us. You need to shower thoroughly. You need to lose your clothing; do you hear me?"

"I – I – killed someone, Lassie," Gus mouthed barely above a whisper sounding very broken.

"Gus, you have the right to remain silent, remain silent. Please. Do I make myself clear?" Lassiter said, trying to get through to the distraught man.

Yin had been right about one thing. Gus was a pacifist, he may have appeared soft, but when push came to shove, he'd saved people and Lassiter knew it was going to be at a great cost.

Lassiter summoned Juliet to the hallway once a stream of doctors and nurses had filled the room.

"O'Hara, I'm going to take Guster here upstairs, he's in shock from _witnessing_ a police shooting and an assault on his best friends. Is that good with you?"

"More than good, boss. And Carlton, I think you may be going soft in your old age," Juliet told Lassiter as she wiped her gun clean of Gus' fingerprints.

Gus's pupils were huge, his breaths ragged. Lassiter marched him up two flights of stairs to the emergency ward and found the same nurse who'd been so kind to him and Juliet. Lassiter shoved Gus into the shower room and stood outside. He wasn't surprised to hear the occasional gasp of grief. Gus appeared twenty minutes later looking flushed from the warm water. Lassiter tied Gus's clothing into a bag.

Lassiter sat Gus down and spoke quietly to the nurse who took Gus into an examination room to be assessed for shock. She wrapped a warmed blanket around Gus's shaking shoulders.

"He's dehydrated and in shock, I'll have a doctor take a look," the nurse confirmed.

Lassiter realized that everyone had been existing on coffee and adrenaline for two days. No wonder.

The doctor prescribed an IV with some sedatives. Whenever Gus mumbled, Lassiter shushed him. He spoke whenever he and Gus were alone.

"Lassie?" Gus whispered. "'M gonna be sick."

And Lassiter wondered where the hell the nurse was as he picked up an emesis basin and handed it to Gus, sitting the trembling man up and rubbing small circles on his back as he wretched.

"We will never speak of this," Lassiter ordered. "Or what happened downstairs. Ever."

"But – what about – Juliet?" Gus gasped between wretches that made Carlton wretch with him.

"Trust me, Juliet is one of the finest officers I know, and she knows her way around paperwork. Yin attacked us; she did her job. As a civilian, Gus, you're going to have to relive this over and over again, but instead of coming to terms on your own, you will be forced to do it in front of cops, a judge, maybe Yin's family if he has any that would show for a trial, his victim's families … Gus, Juliet was a victim of Yin's too. If she thought that you were going to be put through the wringer because of Yin, she's going to blame herself for not being able to protect you – and the truth is, in civilian shootings, lawyers get a hold of things and it could be made to look like there were other options than lethal force. Lawyers love that these days. Yin has tormented this department and citizens for too long, if he gets to do it through the justice system, his reign of terror never ends. With a police shooting, there will be questions but fewer options for extraneous scrutiny. Hell, for all we know, Yin could have orchestrated even this, some sort of suicide by cop because he knew that he chose the wrong foe. He was cunning, he would know that with you as the shooter, a jury could possibly put you away for revenge shooting, vigilantism – his loss of life for your loss of freedom - balance."

Gus closed his eyes, remembering the sound of Juliet's head impacting with the porcelain table as she fought Yang, Shawn completely defenseless to the raised gun.

"Everything Yin did was calculated," Gus agreed tiredly, his voice slightly slurred from the drugs. Mr. Spenser said that there are officers who are still damaged from run-ins with Yin and Yang. He was always one step ahead."

"So it stands to reason that he could have made plans beyond his demise, to puppeteer from the grave for some sick legacy. We can't help him do that, Guster. A police shooting will hold more water in the inquiries. Yin needs to be stopped, even now.

Gus looked at Lassiter. The man had never once advocated for coverups The truth meant more to him that anyone Gus knew, so it must mean something that here he was, not only trying to protect him and his partner but laying out the sad truth, that the only way to truly stop Yin, even in death, was to make a clear-cut sequence of events from a professional, law enforcement standpoint so that some money-grubbing lawyer or do-gooder couldn't spin things so that Yin would look like a victim, a poor, sick individual who should have been brought in peacefully and deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, not shot by a vigilante.

"Did – you see them, Lassie?" Gus sobbed openly now, the sedative loosening the knotted muscles on his forearms and smoothing his forehead from its scrunched-up stress wrinkles. "They looked like they belonged – there – in those drawers."

"And they'd still be there if not for you and Juliet and how many others would Yin have taken? I'm gonna check on my partner and Henry and get some information on our wayward detectives, okay? Get some rest and Gus, remain silent."

Lassiter patted Gus on the shoulder and watched as Gus's head lolled to the side in fitful sleep.

XXXXXXXXXX

Henry's legs shook as his son and Buzz were carried upstairs. It made more sense than taking the long way around to the other bank of elevators when the emergency ward was directly above them.

Once again both men disappeared into separate trauma rooms as Juliet led Henry to the waiting room to find her boss. She found Lassiter and was relieved to see Chief Vick who'd arrived, still clutching an overnight bag in her arms.

"O'Hara are you okay?" Vick said, looking her detective over from head to toe. "This can't have been easy on any of you."

Juliet sat down heavily. The man who'd dangled her on a clock tower to die was dead and she was more than willing to save Gus and the reputation of her department from the media spotlight and investigations that would ruin them emotionally. She would have reports to fill out, debriefings to attend, mandatory psychiatrist screenings and court hearings but a world without Yin made all that worth it.

"I'm good, Chief," Juliet said quietly.

"Lassiter, sit down before you fall down," Vick said.

Henry stood beside the chairs McNabb's parents occupied talking quietly to them. McNabb had been taken directly to surgery to close some internal stitches that had opened, The last Henry had seen of the young constable was when a doctor had re-intubated him while yelling orders for blood transfusions and warming measures.

XXXXXXXXX

Thanks for reading. Lots more to come.


	8. Chapter 8

"Family of Shawn Spencer?" a female voice called into the waiting room.

Henry stood up and the doctor walked to the very tired looking man. Everyone else crowded around causing the doctor's perfectly shaped eyebrows to arch.

"It's okay, they're family," said Henry.

"I'm Dr. Alice Rimmer. I was going to be consulting on Shawn's knee surgery tomorrow to fix his cartilage, but his trauma team asked me to stick around. Shawn's breathing was being supported before – he was further compromised," the doctor said uncomfortably. "But the team decided based on Shawn's oxygen saturation levels to intubate him. Shawn has a large contusion on his temple and on the back of his head which has caused a mild concussion; that coupled with the cold temperatures in – where he was uh, found, compromised his breathing, but with the intubation, his O2 levels have stabilized nicely. Shawn's feet need stitches in several places and his right heel is broken. With the stitches Shawn needs and the orthopedics, I will be responsible for, we feel it would be best to get him into surgery tonight and take care of everything at once. The sooner that's taken care of, the sooner we can extubate, which is ideal to prevent pneumonia or other complications that could further exacerbate any risks."

"Risks?" Henry asked. "Can I see him?"

"You can come with me; you may notice the same sort of equipment you saw before, but this time it's warming measures rather than cooling – Dr. Pomme briefed me on your son's injuries from earlier. As soon as your son is fully stable, we'll get started."

"Mr. Spencer," Gus said, emerging from an examination room leaning on an IV pole like it alone grounded him to the earth, startling everyone as he'd been so quiet and distant. "Can I see, Shawn, please?"

The Dr. nodded at Henry that Gus could come if it was okay with him.

"Of course, Gus," Henry said, putting his hand on Gus' shoulder.

XXXXXXX

Shawn's wounds had been cleaned but the blood-red lines under the medical tape stood out starkly against his paper-white skin. Wires snaked out near Shawn's chest which was covered in thick blankets. Gus brushed up against the IV bag as he stood next to his friend. It was dripping warmed fluids. Shawn's eyes were already closed with light gauze pads.

"Excuse me, dear," a nurse said to Henry as she gently put a surgical cap on Shawn's unruly, still wax-covered hair.

"Oh, he won't like that," Gus said sadly. "You look like Lunch Lady Doris, Shawn. Once you get out of here, I'm never going to let you _ live _that down. You hear me? You're gonna be fine, okay?"

Before Henry was ready, before he'd found words that he could detach from his throat, the doctor announced that they were ready to take Shawn to surgery. It was just too soon, and the word _risks _stood out amongst the others the doctor had spoken.

"You were so brave, Shawn. Be brave once more then we can all go home. I'm proud of you, son."

Whatever Gus had to say to Shawn was in the quiet language of silence that only the two friends could ever share and yet somehow miraculously end up on the same page. A small part of Henry was jealous of the exchange, but he smiled in spite of himself. They were Spock and Captain Kirk, Gilligan and The Skipper, E.T. and Elliot and the perfect combination of all their heroes of watching TV together for decades (though they argued about which was which). They were Shawn and Gus - heroes.

XXXXXX

Most of Buzz McNabb's face was hidden beneath surgical tape and plastic tubes. His dark lashes fluttered over eyes that were roving in closed sockets. The officer was surrounded by strangers. Moments of basic lucidity laced with terror as being settled into the ICU recovery room was confused with Yin's relentless torments to his body and mind. His skin crawled with a thousand pins and needles from the cold and his jaws clenched together so tightly that the only thing keeping them from shattering like his sanity was the plastic tube that felt more like strangulation than lifesaving breaths of life.

"Whatever drugs that psycho gave this guy are still dampening the sedatives," a masked doctor said in frustration to an officer standing guard in the corner. It's frankly a miracle he survived the anesthetic."

The officer in the corner removed the surgical mask he'd been required to wear in the surgical suite but could only shake his head in sadness. Attitudes of the frontline officers had changed with proper information but that didn't change the fact that Officer McNabb was still under arrest with very serious charges pending.

The doctor stepped into the hall and before he bent to take a much-deserved drink of water from the fountain, he was surrounded and the door he had just appeared through, was shadowed by the form of yet another officer and two others.

"Our son … is he…" Mr. McNabb's weary voice croaked. The doctor explained Buzz's surgeries and risks as he did with any family but looked to Chief Vick when he was asked whether the McNabb's could see their son. After trading a significant look with the chief, the doctor gave the only news he had.

"Due to the nature of your son's injuries, surgery was the only option to save his life. Ideally, we'd have waited until the drugs he was exposed to both initially and during the subsequent attacks were flushed as they interfere with sedation. We were lucky that our anesthesiologist recently studied new techniques used on critically injured street drug users who are compromised by both their drug of choice and naloxone interventions before emergency surgeries, and even though we were unable to ascertain quickly the type of drug he was exposed to tonight, some of the techniques were still useful."

"Please thank him or her for us," Mrs. McNabb said quietly. "And, please tell my son that we love him."

"I have no say whether you can see your son or not, but," the doctor said, turning to Vick, "that young man is fighting to live and while his pain level is controlled as best we can, we can't induce a coma as we would have been able to do in ideal circumstances. He's going to need support."

"Please give me a moment," Chief Vick said, wiping what looked suspiciously like tears from her eyes as she set off down the hallway to where L.A. had set up a command center in the very room where they had met previously. She was back in minutes, cellphone in hand.

"Thank you for talking to the judge at this late hour, Chief," Vick was heard before hanging up. She turned to Buzz's parents.

"Mr. and Mrs. McNabb, I wish we were seeing you on a better occasion, but I was able to get your son released from police custody on his own recognizance. That means you will be able to see him at the hospital's discretion and he will be temporarily committed here under the psychiatric act – as um, this is so hard to say – The judge wants to make sure he's not a danger to himself or others. He'll remain in the ICU until he's stable. I want to assure you that I'm going to be working on an alternative to Buzz having to stay here once he's stable and I want to go on record to tell you that I believe Buzz is one of the best officers Santa Barbara has and that his integrity is unmarred based on what I believe to be irrefutable evidence. Your son is as much a victim as Mr. Spencer was - as everyone was."

Mr. and Mrs. McNabb sat down to wait until their son was out of recovery – if he in fact recovered.

XXXXXX

Throughout the following day, Chief Vick ordered her officers to go to the hotel rooms she had reserved nearby to eat and sleep. Henry and Gus had been harder to convince but both looked on the brink of collapse. Gus's rolled up sleeve revealed a bandage from where his IV had been.

"Would it make you feel better to know that I will not be leaving until Lassiter reports back for a medical follow-up later on and that police guards have been placed on McNabb and Shawn, guards that were handpicked by L.A.'s Chief?" Vick asked. "I know the press has been brutal, but I promise you, if they try to bother our boys, they will regret it and they will not get anywhere near them."

"It's an infamous case," Henry stated. "I had a reporter in my face as soon as I stepped into the men's room. How do these things leak out so fast?" … Henry smiled as Shawn's voice interrupted his thoughts as if his son were beside him … _well, dad, at your age things tend to just leak out because…_

Vick let the long pause in Henry's story go as further evidence that the man needed rest. She waited for him to continue.

"They already want to know about the _"killer cop"_ and the _psychic detective_ and why it took so long to put an end to the Yin/Yang killings."

"Well, we did sort of storm L.A. and close down a major tourist attraction and one of the city's largest hospitals," Vick reminded Henry. It's not so much a leak as a dam break."

"A _damn _dam break," Gus said, channeling Shawn as well.

"Shawn never does anything small," Henry smiled tightly. "Okay, but you'll call us if anything changes or if Shawn or Buzz wakes?"

"I promise, now go," Vick said, "I have tons of paperwork to keep me busy and I just might relieve one of the guards for a coffee break, I haven't been in the field in a long time and I've been given some privilege here."

XXXXXXXXXX

Shawn woke to voices he didn't recognize. He took stock of his body. He tried to draw his knees up to relieve his aching back and bit back a cry of pain behind the obstruction in his parched throat when his heel tried to support the weight of his leg. He tried to remain positive, he could feel his legs … even though they currently felt like raw, bloody stumps. He opened his eyes to muted light which did nothing to help with the blurriness. The pain in his head made him grateful that there were no bright lights around, he just might decide to follow the light back into oblivion or to where Father Westley assured many churchgoers it would lead … _if there is such a place and if liars are allowed there,_ he thought sadly.

"Welcome back, Mr. Spencer," came a calming, female voice.

But that was the wrong thing to say because, at the moment, Shawn didn't know where exactly he was being welcomed back _to._ When a hand brushed against his, Shawn's vitals monitors sped up.

"N - nooo. Where 'm I?" Shawn tried to rasp around the respirator which he now fought. Didn't matter if the hands that touched him were gentle, Yang had caressed him in the past like a favorite pet or something worse. The nurse gently removed his hands from his respirator.

"Shawn, Mr. Spencer, listen, you're in the hospital. You're safe," the nurse soothed, pressing a call button to summon a doctor. "Listen, just as soon as we remove that ventilator you seem to be hating, we'll call your family and they'll be right over to see you, promise."

Shawn triggered the ventilator strongly trying to calm himself as figures came out of the mist all around him. He had no choice but to hope this wasn't some sick game of Yin's. But … Yin died, right? How? And … _had Gus held a gun?_

"Okay, Shawn, you're going to feel some discomfort as we remove the tube but I'm going to need you to cough as strongly as you can once it's clear, okay?" a man's voice instructed.

Shawn nodded as hands on both sides of him gently held his shoulders. He gagged as the ventilator tube snaked up his throat, tears leaking from the corners of his clouded eyes which did nothing to clear them. The hydraulic whoosh sound of his bed was accompanied by a groan as it insisted that the psychic detective give up his prone position. He coughed roughly, feeling a basin slipped against his chin and cheek and the taste of paraffin induced more than coughing. If he never saw another candle or Baby Bell Cheese again in his life he'd be happy.

Shawn lay back, exhausted as a nasal cannula was taped across his lip blowing in much-needed oxygen. Shawn was glad for the control of his own breaths. Now to figure out the rest of his body.

"Better?" the familiar voice of asked, leaning over his patient with a penlight at the ready.

"I'm just going to check your pupil responses and then we can talk pain, deal?"

"No – no more meds … can't th-think this way," Shawn slurred.

"I doubt the agony you're currently in is helping," Dr. Pomme replied as he pried Shawn's left eye wider and shone the light.

"Owwww, m'not in pain," Shawn howled.

"The sheets your fists are currently balled into would beg to differ," Pomme said kindly.

Shawn let go of the sheets and sucked in his breath until he got dizzy which did nothing to improve his vision as the doctor asked him to follow his finger with his eyes.

Shawn tried to tamp down the hope that flared in his chest when he could vaguely see the object in front of him as it moved slowly back and forth in front of him. After all, he couldn't even tell if it was a finger, he could just see _something _teasing at the edge of his vision.

"I'm encouraged by your being able to follow my finger. Your eyes are healing remarkably well all things considered with the bandages being off because of your … well, unfortunate…"

"Encounter with Mr. Yin," Shawn coughed. It was like saying Lord Voldemort's name. That brought an ironic smile to Shawn's chapped lips. Gus had whispered the name of the Dark Lord as he read some of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows aloud to Shawn when he thought he was asleep recovering from appendix surgery.

"Encounter with Mr. Yin. Sounds like a best seller to me," the nurse said. She meant well but that story was the stuff of nightmares,

"I'm thinking that in two or three days your vision will be restored and will continue to improve. Now as my boss' sheets are being shredded in your hands I assume you know your knee and heel have had some repairs. After some physiotherapy and rest, in four months or so you'll be back to …" Pomme looked at his charts, at least that's what Shawn thought he saw, "you'll be able to play the piano again." Yep, old Doc Rimmer has a sense of humor, wrote that in your chart."

Shawn suddenly realized he had no idea what time it was, or even what day. Any levity was forgotten when he understood what being here did to him. All he had felt was his own body, his own being. His brain didn't care that he was exhausted. The emptiness that had crept into his bones from the onslaught that was Yin, was suddenly, uncontrollably filled with images of everyone he loved suffering all at once, unrelenting as his eyes roved under clenched lids as if he could shut them out.

"How 'bout those pain meds now, Shawn?" Dr. Pomme asked kindly, trying to give Shawn a sense of control that was so important to victims of violence.

Shawn nodded mutely. He felt the warmth rush into him, his jaw unlocking, the sheets slipping from his fists again but his knuckles remaining stubbornly fisted. The images that were on fast forward before, slowed into a sluggish slide show, devoid of color like one of Yin's old black and white movies.

XXXXXXXX

Shawn counted the walking gait of the person hurrying up – or down the hall outside his room in a hurry. _Dad_. The room was dimmed, and Shawn didn't bother to try to focus his eyes, it hadn't helped any of the other forty-two times he'd tried in the last forty-two minutes. But the steps didn't stop.

"Shawn, thank God!" came Henry's voice. Warm breath right next to his ear, before he'd even had time to sense the hug that was in full progress and which from once, in a very long while, he didn't recoil but closed his eyes despite their uselessness and relished the safety that had always been present in his dad's arms.

Scents came to Shawn's nose. Henry's recent shower had not been with his usual line of Old Spice brand of soap, shampoo, aftershave, and deodorant. They were fresh, but smelled white … if white was a scent, generic and non-allergenic – _ah, hotel toiletries then. _

"'M okay, dad. Promise," Shawn rasped.

It was when Henry didn't reply right away that Shawn knew how okay he _hadn't_ been in the last two days or so.

"How's Gus?" Shawn deflected, not wanting to ask about Juliet because he really didn't want to know if Buzz had been telling the truth about telling Juliet that he wasn't psychic. Then it dawned on Shawn all at once. _Buzz knew_. Yin had told him. Even if somehow, Juliet didn't know, it wouldn't be long until Buzz was debriefed if Buzz was still…

"Wait," Shawn pleaded before Henry could even answer his son's first question about his best friend. "Uh, um, dad, is Buzz still…"

"McNabb is putting up one hell of a fight. His body is nearly clear of the drugs Yin dosed him with and when his breathing improved doctors removed his respirator. He still hasn't woken but Vick said he's responding sporadically to his parent's voices."

"That's – that's good," Shawn said gratefully past the dryness in his throat.

Knowing that Shawn needed information quickly before his brain filled in gaps with fearful speculation, Henry attempted to anticipate his son's queries starting with the one he'd voiced first.

"Guster is just fine. Vick had rented him a room at the hotel, but he was so out of it when we got back that I insisted he sleep on one of the beds in my room. It was either that or stick him in here with you and then he wouldn't have slept at all. He'd have been watching you."

Shawn nodded in agreement, glad that his friend had been sent to rest.

Shawn lowered his voice, not that he needed to much, the sore throat from the ventilator had mostly taken any potential volume away He'd been unconscious, yet somehow, the voices from the ordeal had reached him in a jumble of memories like a jigsaw puzzle of a polar bear eating a marshmallow in a snowstorm.

Juliet to his left, Lassie to his left, Gus – somehow in front of him, Yin … everywhere. A shot.

"Dad, Gus … he…"

"That Juliet is one fine cop; she finally got a clear shot and…"

"Yeah," Shawn agreed quickly. He smiled sadly thinking about Juliet's chivalry which he dared not hope could extend to his lies. All he could do was be thankful that in time, his friends would heal, with or without him depending if they could forgive him.

"Dad, I tried to – to handle this on my own. I just wasn't fast enough, and I didn't know Yin had gotten to Buzz and now everything's so messed up. Gus is going to feel so guilty, Buzz probably told Juliet everything and Buzz's job and everything will be…"

Henry put his hand on Shawn's chest. "Easy there, kid, your monitors speed up any more and you'll have those nurses back in here kicking me out," Henry said gently. "And who else is a victim here? How many victims in this room, son?"

Shawn didn't bother opening his eyes back up or answering to the new version of the hat/victim game. He was exhausted and he couldn't see the understanding, sad smile on his father's face anyway. He didn't have to. And he hated the pity that accompanied it.

"You didn't ask for any of this, Shawn. And just so you know you're not dying because I'm being too nice to you, I mean, yes, you know the things you will need to eventually sort out but everything that happened with Yin and Yang, son, none of that is your fault. I've never been madder or prouder of you for trying to save people on your own but like it or not, sometimes even a person like you needs a hand."

Shawn let his dad's words wash over him as exhaustion claimed him as he heard his dad's weight taken by the plastic chair right beside his bed and a warm, reassuring hand clasped around his wrist.

XXXXXXXX

Shawn woke slowly to voices in his room. There was a great improvement to the way his head felt both in terms of clarity and comfort. He took an experimental sniff of the air. The waxy smell was gone, replaced with the usual hospital disinfectant smells and – _was that lavender?_ He reached up and touched the top of his own head. Past a few bandages, his hair felt soft instead of like a mold of Sonic The Hedgehog.

"Gus?" Shawn queried without opening his eyes.

"Yeah, it's me, Shawn," Gus said nervously.

"Did you wash my hair? That's so…"

"Well, if you must know, Shawn, the nurse was going to use Dove. You know how you hate that stuff and how it dries your scalp out," Gus said defensively until he looked over to see his friend's eyes opened and a smile plastered to his tired face.

"It does indeed. Why my dad here, his head is already snowing from the hotel shampoo. Where did you get lavender oil at a hotel, Gus?" Shawn questioned as if avoiding normal questions after just waking up from near-death would make it all go away.

"Well, you see, there was a nice officer from the impound lot and she dropped off my stuff from the blueberry as a courtesy. You know I always keep a supply of grooming products on hand."

There was an awkward silence before Shawn found himself apologizing once again. His best friend was out of a job because of him. Had shot someone because of him.

"Your dad already told me what you're trying to do. I was just talking to McNabb's parents. Buzz is awake and blaming himself for everything, too. For the love of God, Shawn, just let it stop here. Bad people did this. All of it. The things that happened because of them in between were still one hundred percent their fault. Not yours. Not McNabb's. Not my-"

"Not yours," Shawn rasped tiredly as Henry passed him some ice chips.

Gus's eyes clouded with tears as he hugged his best friend so gently, afraid he might fall apart or disappear.

Shawn greeted visitors with false stoicism over the next few hours, doctors and officers alike. Everyone who came in who wasn't in the clouded form in Shawn's eyes of a petite blonde with a voice he was desperate for, got a cursory greeting and a subdued _no I'm fine, really._

XXXXXXXX

After a short patient transfer flight from L.A. to Santa Barbara four days later. Shawn could be heard arguing uselessly that he should be able to go straight home, that he didn't need to be admitted to hospital any longer.

"I am not going in there," Shawn protested upon reading, _Psychiatric Ward_ printed on the arch of the hallway ceiling above his gurney as it was whisked by. Well, it might have read, _Psychic Ward_ with his slowly improving vision but that would be way too awesome.

"Mr. Spenser, need I remind you how much expense this tragedy has cost the taxpayers both of L.A. and Santa Barbara? McNabb is still technically under arrest … um, I mean the _care_ of the state, under guard. Sharing a room with him makes financial sense since you are also under a protection order until we can ascertain whether you are still under threat," Vick said, leaning over his gurney and blocking all light with her authority despite her thin frame.

Despite knowing with no uncertainty that McNabb would never hurt a fly – or him, Shawn wasn't sure he was ready to face the man that had been programmed to kill him. But this was Shawn, it wasn't because he was scared for his safety, or mad at Buzz. It all came down to guilt. If he'd just stayed with Gus, if he'd just waited for help maybe Buzz would have been saved before so much damage had been done.

"Okay," Shawn said quietly.

Vick felt like crap for lying to Shawn like that. The truth was, the powers that be were so grateful that the Yin/Yang saga seemed at an end, that her budget had been approved for tying up loose ends like security and such. The truth was McNabb was slipping further away from them and guilt was eating her psychic detective alive. She needed her department back to normal. Too many good officers had lost their lives or senses to the maniacs called Yin and Yang and they would not claim any more, not under her watch. And if Shawn happened to benefit from McNabb's court-ordered psych evaluations and sessions as his roommate, so be it.

"Thanks, Karen," Henry sighed as Shawn was assured by a nurse that his residency in this ward was voluntary despite the fact that in addition to their assigned police guards, there were huge orderlies bustling about the wing.

McNabb was tucked into a bed in the rather spacious room. Shawn absently rubbed at his arm where his IV had been as McNabb's IVs were hung above him and his oxygen mask was fitted more snugly to his face. A nurse noted his vitals in a chart while the pale officer stared blankly at the ceiling.

Shawn flinched when two orderlies tried to help him from his gurney to his bed. He'd been transferring on his own for two days. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a nurse make a notation on a chart that he knew damn well was about him. So much for only being in the psych ward to help the taxpayer. He glared at his father who had tried to convince him to seek professional help for years

XXXXXXXX

Despite insisting that the flight hadn't left him spent, Shawn fell asleep quickly after getting settled in. When he awoke, The window to his right tried to allow the moon to shine in through the bars that interrupted its natural purpose. Shawn groped for the button to raise the head of his bed, gulping air that seemed too thick. He needed whole pictures now, not fragments, not captivity.

"Mr. Spenser, is everything alright?" a nurse asked, shutting off the heart monitor alarm that had blared.

"I – I need air. I need out of here. They said I can leave this room. Prove it. Now. I can't be here," he half commanded, half pleaded.

Shawn was shocked when the no-nonsense nurse left for a minute and returned with a wheelchair.

"Would you like to sit in the atrium for a bit, Mr. Spenser?" she asked kindly.

Now Shawn felt stupid. "Y – yes … yeah, that would be good," he replied, running a shaky hand over his face.

Shawn appreciated that the nurse didn't try to make small talk. She showed her ID badge to one of the guards who followed at a discreet distance to the atrium while the other guard stayed on the door to his and McNabb's room.

The floor-to-ceiling windows in the atrium of the psychiatric ward allowed a whitish-yellow full moon to stencil the shadows of small bushes and tall billowy plants onto the gleaming tiled floors. In one second, Shawn's sharp eyes detected movement among the branches, and he couldn't imagine why any sparrow in his right mind would want to be inside a place like this when all he wanted was to leave. Now. Then he spotted the sunflower seeds that had obviously been placed purposely near the small wishing well with the tiny waterfall.

"So, cunning, not crazy then, huh, little guy?" Shawn whispered to the sparrow who cocked his head to the side as if understanding the human sitting near him.

Once Shawn convinced himself that the moon was the same inside his room as out of it, it was okay again. His ribs still ached from the CPR and took turns with his leg pulsing in time with his heartbeat. But what hurt most was the admission that his nightmares included McNabb standing over his bed, ready to finish what Yin had started. Yin was living in his head and he needed to leave the building. McNabb needed to be exonerated, put out of his misery before the damage was irreparable and though Shawn had tried to tell Buzz that nothing was his fault, the officer would have to forgive himself first and to do that, he needed to touch base with his true self.

McNabb turned his head to face the window when Shawn came back into the room whereas before, he'd merely pretended to sleep.

"Nabby, I see you when you're sleeping, I see you when you wake, I know if you've been bad or good, so for the love of pineapple soup stop making me recite Santa Claus and talk to me, man."

Shawn could have sworn he'd heard Buzz snap his eyes shut. It was true, when one sense lagged, others picked up, and in Shawn's case, it was an enhanced experience to say the least.

Shawn had been hiding his pain all day. Every time he wanted to reach up and touch his sore chest or shift so his cast didn't feel so much a part of him, he fought off the urge, especially if his dad, Gus or anyone else was present. But it seemed now, he'd have to pull out the big guns. Shawn reached under his tee shirt and pulled the sticky heart monitors off of his chest after disconnecting the alarm just as he'd seen the nurse do. He couldn't have them give him away. If McNabb wanted to ignore him, then McNabb would have to ignore his own protective instincts, his own selflessness, his Nabbyness as Gus had once called it.

Shawn fumbled for the last of the monitors and yanked only to accidentally catch the edge of his bandages from where a drainage tube had been used to drain his lung.

"Ow, oh God," Shawn moaned, biting his lip and squinting his eyes shut tight.

McNabb peaked surreptitiously at him across the dimmed room, but he didn't speak.

So much for having to fake needing help to get McNabb to acknowledge him. Warmth trickled down his side. Shawn tried to sit up but his abdominal muscles protested and his broken leg refused to provide help by way of leverage.

"Shawn!" McNabb called hoarsely, his oxygen mask in his right hand from where he'd yanked it from his face and did a half sit up in alarm before falling back onto his own pillows in a world of hurt.

Shawn knew he had seconds before a nurse would appear.

"McNabb. You gotta talk to me, man, I don't think I can do this," Shawn pleaded in a minute of naked truth he assured himself was supreme acting. If McNabb would hobble on severed toes to get a parched Shawn a drink of water, he would talk to him now. Or maybe Yin really had taken his final victim…

"I called a n-nurse, Shawn. Stay … just stay calm." McNabb's voice broken with disuse and uncertainty held a touch of the level-headed police officer in its timbre and wasn't that a crappy thing that Shawn was using that word, - _timbre_, the very word that Cameron Lundtz had used on him during hostage negotiations and caveman-like competition over Juliet – who still hadn't been in to see him.

In minutes, Shawn's hasty attempt to reapply his heart monitors was thwarted. Somehow, the very clever detective hadn't caught when McNabb had pressed his call button to save him.

"A lot of people don't like the monitors, but we can't be taking them off, Shawn, may I call you Shawn?" the nurse said patiently.

_We_ _can't be taking them off?_ Shawn thought. _Only one of me here. Is she talking to me like a patient, well, not a patient – a patient who belongs in this ward?_

Shawn glimpsed his chest for the first time since being in the hospital. The fact that he'd technically died hit him squarely when the mottled purples, yellows and greens swirled in almost hand-shaped kaleidoscope quality. The bandages over where the drainage tubes had been were spotted in red from his animations to lure McNabb out and seeing them made them real. Made them hurt. When the nurse reapplied the sticky monitors on tiny, shaved patches of his chest, Shawn managed the audacity to voice his vanity.

"My sternum bush will never be the same," Shawn said sadly, trying to mask the myriad of poisonous things swirling in his brain.

McNabb looked over at his friend, no matter if no one would ever call McNabb friend after what he'd done to them. McNabb was smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Just because he was an overgrown teddy bear didn't mean he was dumb. He'd seen the way Gus could always distract the overworked psychic's brain. He could see Shawn was getting overwhelmed now, how his eyes bolted out the window wanting to take his body with them, could see the veins sticking out in Shawn's neck as he rubbed absently at his eyes. Could see that Shawn was baiting him and failing at it because he was just as lost. Shawn gasped as his wounds were cleaned and redressed. And McNabb knew what he had to do.

"Sternum bush? You still have a sternum bush? Luxury, Mine's on the inside now. Lashed together to hold my insides in," McNabb said in a perfect English accent mimicking Monty Python's skit.

"Your insides are lashed together? Luxury, mine are still floating around like a sack of loose pebbles," Shawn mimicked in a less effective English accent.

'You puppies will never have a grand stern bush like mine," Carlton Lassiter growled, striding in like he owned the place.

"Lassieface, avert your eyes!" Shawn said, unable to shake his accent.

Lassiter froze, unable to do as Shawn instructed quick enough to avoid having his stomach turned at the sight of Shawn's chest. The tall officer collected himself in what he was sure was enough time to not be seen in a moment of empathy but hoping he hadn't interrupted McNabb's reluctant return to the living.

"Okay, Shawn, just a little sting as I apply the antiseptic," the nurse said and Shawn was shocked into not feeling it as Lassiter turned away, hand on his stomach looking ashen.

The nurse got Shawn a new tee-shirt and by the time Shawn lay back in his bed, he was worn and at a loss for words. He didn't know whether to be glad Lassiter interrupted he and McNabb's feeble attempts to find a new normal or mad. But the next thing that came out McNabb's mouth, cinched it. He didn't have the words to fix this.

"Th -thanks for coming, Sir," McNabb addressed Lassiter. Chief Vick wouldn't accept my badge and gun. I want – please – for you to take my wallet badge here," McNabb said, his voice breaking as he held out his palm which held his badge so tightly it had imprinted onto the tender skin there like a tattoo he'd held it for so long waiting for his head detective to come get it.

"No," Lassiter said before folding his tall frame into a significantly more comfortable chair than he'd sat in at the L.A. hospital.

"Sir?" McNabb questioned, his Adam's apple bobbing convulsively in his throat.

"Exactly what part of no, don't you understand, _Officer _McNabb?" Lassiter repeated without even looking at his stricken subordinate. Shawn tried to ground himself from the pain of bandage changes by observing the goings-on.

Lassiter must have worked late. His gun was still holstered at his shoulder. It was past midnight. He took off his jacket and folded it across the other chair in between the two beds. He didn't acknowledge the clatter of McNabb's badge hitting the floor, nor did he attempt to pick it up. Shawn kept his eyes fixed on the head detective, grounded himself from the pain in pure observation as Lassiter pulled a book from his folded jacket and proceeded to read aloud.

"The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern. _Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favorite pastimes were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. His name was Wesley but she never called him that. "Farmboy, polish my horse's saddle, I want to see my face shining in it by morning." "As you wish," the farm boy whispered, watching Buttercup walk away."_

Shawn had seen The Princess Bride. He wasn't some kid, home from school sick. Didn't need someone babysitting him, reading to him. He kicked himself to avoid pointing out that he was of sound mind, a grown-up, mostly tax-paying citizen – (well Gus usually took care of that), Afterall, faking a bit of PTSD usually got him some pineapple ice cream from the motherly nurse. _And I am faking_, Shawn thought to himself, his chin rising in silent challenge that didn't come. _Ah, this is for McNabb …_ Okay then. He could be quiet, in a freaked-out sort of way as Lassiter's voice changed in narration of different characters along the way.

In the morning, Lassiter was gone. The book sat on a table near a potted plant with a bookmark placed somewhere between the Dread Pirate Roberts and the R.O.U.S's - rodents of unusual size, Shawn couldn't remember. Lassiter had succeeded, Shawn had slept a full night without waking.

Shawn looked over toward McNabb's bed. The officer was nowhere to be seen. In the movies, that always meant that someone had died. Shawn had to convince himself that a scenario like that was unlikely. Buzz had been stable upon transfer to Santa Barbara.

The guard outside the room heard Shawn's slight gasp as he raised the head of his bed and peaked around the corner of the door. "He's out for a scan," the guard told him.

Shawn let out a breath as the breakfast trays were brought into the room by overly cheerful candy-stripers. He groaned as he lifted the lid wondering what hellish, Oompa-Loompa-infested kitchen made the green Jell-O that seemed to supply all of California's hospitals. It hardly qualified as soft food with its grainy, undissolved crystals crunching between the teeth loud enough to be heard.

"You gonna eat that?" Gus asked cheerfully walking in and picking up a plastic spoon and scooping the disgusting snotty substance without waiting for an answer.

Gus was dressed in his _other job_ clothing as Shawn liked to call his stylish suits.

"Wait," Shawn said, not wanting to have to remind his best friend that he'd been fired. If Gus was in this much denial, he might as well pull up a bed beside he and McNabb. " Why are you dressed like that?"

"I'm going to pick up my things from West Coast Pharmaceuticals today. I'm most certainly not going in there as a civilian, guards all over me watching that I don't steal something," Gus said indignantly. Shawn avoided pointing out that pharmaceutical reps were in fact, civilians because Gus fancied himself a superhero of modern medicine.

If there was an award for bad timing, the orderly who pushed an exhausted looking McNabb into the room would win hands down. Shawn and Gus tried to change the touchy subject of Gus' job loss, but the damage was done.

McNabb was settled into bed. He tried for silence but groaned trying to roll to face the window. Losing Gus his job was the least of his sins, he'd tried to kill Shawn and being forgiven was something he just wasn't ready for. His badge gleamed at him mockingly on the windowsill, placed where the sun would hit it. If he turned away from the people in the room, his badge would stare right back at him as no doubt Lassiter intended when he'd placed it there before leaving last night.

Shawn elbowed Gus, who was sitting on the side of his bed staring at the Jell-O. Gus followed his gaze to the figure in the bed whose shoulders were shaking as he tried to swallow his guilt. Inaudible apologies hiccupped.

"Gus, I'm so sorry. I can't fix this. I tried to resign, I told Vick I called your boss. I asked to be transferred to the jail ward…"

"You did what, McNabb?" Gus shouted. Don't you watch jail movies? Do you know what would happen to you if you went to jail! You're a cop! Come on, son!"

"And I'd deserve it," McNabb whispered.

"This is so messed up," Gus said sadly. He wanted to tell McNabb that he'd shot Yin and that even though technically it had been a public service, it didn't come without guilt. But somewhere deep down, it wasn't devoid of pride too and Gus wasn't proud of feeling that way.

Gus stirred the disgusting Jell-O without success. If anything, it now resembled the flavored Metamucil he'd been tasked to sell to doctors before he'd been fired. Well, the verbal constipation had to end now. The more Gus thought about the situation, the angrier he got at his boss for being so eager to believe him a thief.

"Oh for Pete's sake, McNabb, it's not your fault. Everybody knows that my boss is a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low life, snake licking, dirt eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog- kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug- eyed, stiff- legged, spotty- lipped, worm- headed sack of sh-awn, do you have some Tylenol?"

"You do realize the irony of stealing Clark Griswald's speech verbatim from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while defending yourself from being called a thief, right?" Shawn asked his best friend, a growing sense of pride in his chest when he caught McNabb shake his head.

"I've heard it both ways," Gus sassed, stealing Shawn's usual declaration too.

Hearing the two friends banter made McNabb miss Francine even more. Francine had been released from the hospital, but McNabb had flatly refused to see her. How could he face her after losing them their apartment? How could he have let her come into harm's way?

"You gonna eat that?" Gus asked McNabb's back about the green Jell-O that solidified further with every moment under its plastic wrap.

"You cannot be serious," McNabb sighed. "I just had a scope shoved down my throat to see if I'm healed enough to eat solid food and you want to eat my Jell-O?"

"Well, you did lose me my job," Gus said fairly. Shawn winced in the longest silence since – _ever_, until the shaking of McNabb's shoulders changed. He was laughing!

"You've done it again, you beautiful, magic lavender head," Shawn said, fist-bumping Gus as Gus snagged McNabb's Jell-O.

"You might as well face us, Buzz," Shawn coaxed. Having your back turned to us isn't going to help anything."

"I can't," McNabb whispered.

"Yes you can," Shawn said, irritation creeping into his voice. If he could face McNabb after what happened then it was only fair that the officer made an effort.

"No, I mean I can't. I'm stuck. I'm not supposed to be on my side. I'm gonna be in so much trouble when the nurse gets back."

"Well, I'd like to want to help you," Shawn said unhelpfully. "But…"

Gus took pity on McNabb after several painful attempts to un-turtle himself from his side.

Gus cringed in sympathy at the pain and effort it took for McNabb to roll onto his back even with his help. The veins stood out in the dark-haired man's neck and still pink from the wax forearms and a few tears escaped his scrunched-up eyes as he let out his breath.

"Oh god, Oh fu- rancine!" Buzz choked. Gus lowered his head and made his way to sit on Shawn's bed again feeling like an intruder in a private moment.

Buzz pushed himself up with his bandaged hands. All color drained from his face and he hunched like a caged animal clutching his abdomen as Francine was blocked from going to his side. Chief Vick stood behind her looking formidable with her arms crossed as she blocked the doorway. This reunion was going to happen, one way or another.

"I – I told you not to let her come here!" Buzz shouted, his eyes wild and still wet with pain. "I am dangerous! I can't hurt her again. I've ruined her life!"

Francine stood with her chin up looking at her husband, letting him finish his ludicrous speech. Vick was now flanked by the security guards and an orderly and the nurse pushed into the room having heard Buzz's heart monitors speed up.

"No, you can't hurt me again, Buzz, because you never hurt me a first time, there has to be a first in order for a second to happen. That wasn't you – it never was."

The nurse looked very used to these types of situations on her ward. She carried on under the watchful eyes of the security. Buzz only had eyes for Francine. The nurse easily slid a sedative into the port of McNabb's IV line and stood back and waited patiently.

In seconds, Buzz's body began to sway. Gus stepped forward while nodding to the orderly and helped the nurse lie Buzz back on his pillows and straighten his legs.

"Gus, can you – can you take Francine to her parent's house, p-please?"

Gus sniffled; he was already sympathetically crying as he refused Buzz's request. Gus made his way back to Shawn who begged his best friend to get the wheelchair and take him – anywhere.

As they left the room, Shawn looked back. Francine was bent over stroking her husband's brow under the watchful eyes of security and Buzz's slurred pleading for her to leave and his heartbreaking sobs erased the glimpse of peace they'd shared only moments before.

Chief Vick followed Shawn and Gus into the atrium but waited for an invitation to invade their personal space by the fountain. No one spoke. The bags under Shawn's eyes seemed to have grown, maybe filled with tears that he commanded to stay put.

"Gus, you actually cleptoed McNabb's Jell-O? The man is having a nervous breakdown," Shawn said in half-hearted disgust.

"He's having a nervous break_through_, actually, Shawn. And I'm doing the man a favor. Sick people should _not_ be eating this," Gus replied, squeezing the container into his mouth in lieu of the spoon he'd forgotten to poach.

Vick looked at her watch. Eight in the morning and already drained.

"The Jell-O was a mistake, at least for me. I'm allowed to eat as of yesterday," Shawn said, though the very thought of it was repulsive. 'I don't know about McNabb, that's why they did the scan this morning. I didn't eat yet because I just didn't want to eat in front of Buzz."

Gus immediately started reciting the riot act to his best friend, listing all the complications he could experience from not eating.

Gus, it's only been one day since they said I could eat and I've had smoothies, I'm not going to get scurvy in one day, m'not a pirate - as cool as that would be," Shawn replied.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Vick said, taking out her phone and moving away far enough to keep an eye on Shawn but not to be heard.

The nurse who had attended to Buzz walked by, her nose in a chart. As she slipped a pen behind her ear, Shawn caught her attention.

"How's he doing?"

"Your friend is resting now. He didn't further injure himself and he's been given a mild sedative. His wife has asked to stay so you will notice that one of your assigned guards will be present in the room rather than both outside"

Shawn's face darkened. He wasn't ready to answer the questions he knew that Francine would have.

Gus sat on the side of the fountain when Vick returned.

"I have some good news. Buzz's blood test results have come in. The high levels of drugs in his body and the evidence of how they were administered will exonerate him of any wrongdoing. Having said that, Internal Affairs have stuck their noses in and are closely monitoring the situation and asking for access to full psychiatric assessments as well as physical ones in order to determine how everything will appear on his record of service."

"So he basically gets a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity on his service record instead of a commendation, after all he's been through," Shawn said bitterly. "He wants to be a detective, this is just another thing that will help shut 'im down."

Vick raised her eyebrows but quickly realized there was no reason to be surprised. Shawn could always see right through situations to the heart.

'You know I will do my best to see that if – when – Buzz returns, he will be treated fairly.

"I know you will, Chief, I'm sorry. I just don't want … _them _to win.' _They've taken enough, _Shawn thought sadly. Juliet had yet to visit, either in L.A. or even back home. Maybe she couldn't face him knowing his secret, that he was a fraud. Maybe she had tons of paperwork to fill out in order to report his lies to the chief, maybe Buzz hadn't told her what Yin had told him, maybe she just didn't want to see him.

And Shawn's chest had an entirely different kind of ache to add to his broken ribs and bruises. Gus and Vick had the decency not to notice the glassy eyed smile he tried to give them.

"Damn concussion," Shawn said, "they warned me about the ... watery eyes."

"Oh yeah, that's a big symptom of concussion," Gus agreed entirely too quickly.

Shawn looked down at his hands resting in his blanketed lap feeling very old. Vick and Gus made small talk. Shawn smiled despite his tears. _Come on Gus, you are not seriously trying to distract Vick for me with your line about Pluto, she's a married woman. _

"Who ordered pancakes, original and potato?"

Shawn shook his head, not daring to look up. Was he really that crazy that he'd conjured her to come just because he needed to see her so badly?

"J – Jules – Juliet. I mean, O'Hara," Shawn jumbled out, quickly wiping the back of his hand across his face.

"Shawn, how are you? Gus?" Juliet said. "Chief asked me to bring by some grub for her favorite, starving, psychic detective." The blonde cop gave a significant nod to Shawn. If she knew, she wasn't saying a word and she wasn't going to. It took only a minute of intense study to realize that Juliet didn't know his secret. Buzz had never told her. The momentary elation of that thought deflated just as quickly. Then why hadn't she come to see him until her chief had probably ordered her to bring food?

The pancakes were from Shawn and Gus' favorite breakfast spot. The syrup was real maple, not table syrup, the smoky quality, though its smell seemed to warm him from the inside like sitting by a fire, still did nothing for his appetite.

Gus opened his eco-friendly container and sniffed appreciatively at the steam that danced out. Vick smiled as Gus forked a square of butter and meticulously covered every inch of the top pancake and cut into the stack, unfortunately snaking a mouthful before thinking to ask if Juliet had brought any sausage, which of course she had. She tossed him a carton of milk and smiled.

Shawn's hands were only slightly pink from the wax burns but they were still shiny with ointment. He made a conscious effort to appear enthusiastic about the food. If his dad got wind of him not eating, he'd never hear the end of it and he didn't want any more poking and prodding from the doctors or nurses either. His fingers slipped on the silverware Juliet had brought from the station, the officers had made an eco pact to avoid the plastic variety. Small talk was stuck in his throat somewhere between the apologies for not catching Yin sooner to avoid making her suffer and some vague desire to ask her if she'd heard about Pluto. Yep, he didn't even have a pickup line of his own for the strongest, most beautiful woman he'd ever met.

Before Shawn could register what was happening, Juliet had forked a piece of pancake from her own plate into his mouth. He'd swallowed without remembering if he'd even chewed and it wasn't the mapley goodness as Gus called it that was making him feel warm inside, it was Juliet's horrified expression.

"Oh, my – Oh, I'm so sorry, Shawn. I fed you a bite off my fork, that's so gross, I'm so sorry!"

It was the most wonderful thing Shawn had _never _tasted. Thinking at regular speed for the first time since his concussion and surgeries, he allowed his own pancakes to slide from his lap tray onto the floor only to look forlornly at them while the little sparrow who was sitting expectantly on the other bench looked positively elated.

'Oh, man, looks like my little buddy over there is having pancakes. I can wait until lunch. Butter fingers, you know?" he said, waving his shiny digits helplessly.

Juliet picked up the tray, crumbing a small bit up for Shawn's feathered friend. "Nonsense, we'll share," she said. "That place Vick sent me to that you guys like so much serves huge portions"

No one said a word when Juliet proceeded to continue shoveling food to Shawn on a _one for me, one for you_ schedule but the change in the young psychic detective was instant and Vick saw a bit of color in her junior detective's pale face for the first time since she'd returned to Santa Barbara after exhaustive debriefings in L.A..

Ever the wingman and best friend a guy could ever have, Gus pointed out that the food in hospitals was, though nutritionally adequate to prevent scurvy and sudden onset piracy (SOP), lacked any incentive to want to eat due to its congealed, skinned-over, slimy, moist-even-the-damned-toast quality of the food.

"Well, maybe we can set up something, like take turns cooking for our boys," O'Hara stated. "Well, you know, not _our _boys, Chief, _your_ boys. You know, your employees. Our fellow workers."

"I think that would be a lovely idea, detective, after all, I hear SOP can be very serious." Vick turned to Gus and smiled.

"My feathered buddy is full, think we should thirty-second-rule McNabb if he's allowed to eat if he's awake?"

"There's plenty more that hasn't been on a hospital floor," Vick said, shaking her head. "Probably enough for Buzz and Francie. I doubt she's had anything yet today, either. I know if I was in her shoes, I'd be too nervous to eat."

"If McNabb's awake from the mild sedative, we should pop in if he's calmed down, offer a bit of support before getting back to work," Vick said to Juliet before turning to Gus to ask him to help her clear the takeout containers. Gus smiled as Juliet took the handles of Shawn's wheelchair and began taking him back to his room.

Vick and Juliet hugged Francine who'd stood up, still not taking her hand from Buzz's whose eyes were red and glassy.

"Chief," Buzz greeted hoarsely.

"Officer McNabb," Vick greeted back. "I see that you've been given a breakfast tray.

Buzz's face turned a bit green. 'Yeah, just, can't right now."

"There's a lot of that going around," Vick said sternly. "You will need to be in peak physical shape upon your return to my department, is that clear, officer?"

'Y-yes ma'am," Buzz stammered before seeing her irate face replace her stern one. "I mean, Chief Vick. Yes, Chief."

"Good." Vick's demeanor softened. "Then you need to eat these pancakes instead of – what _is _that mess? In any case, there's enough for you and Francie there and we don't need any episodes of scurvy or piracy in our department, do we?"

"No, Chief," McNabb said a bit puzzled over the piracy comment as Francie raised his bed and he sniffed the offerings in the wrappers appreciatively.

"I'll head out with you," Gus said. "I have to go pick up my last paycheck and personal effects from Central Coast. Don't suppose I could get a ride? The Blueberry was a company car…"

"Of course, Mr. Guster," Vick said.

'I'll see you later Shawn, your dad is coming by in an hour."

Juliet came near Shawn's bed onto which he'd successfully transferred despite the exhaustion. He never wanted to appear weak in front of her, well, he _had_ died in front of her but he'd been unconscious at the time, so it didn't count. Right?

'I'll, uh, see you, Shawn," Juliet said awkwardly, leaning down as if to hug but settling for a pat on the back. She smiled. Had Shawn sniffed her shampoo?

When Gus took one last look at his friend, whose eyes were already closing, the even breaths and soft smile on his lips let Gus know that with time, Shawn would be okay. Francine had taken a page out of Vick's books and ordered Buzz to try a bite of food, to which he complied without argument. Maybe, just maybe, Yin had finally failed.

A/N So a little downtime to heal in this chapter and then on to some more action with a surprise guest you will know from the show in the next chapter. It's all written, I'm just fixing as many errors as possible before posting. Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me. Be excellent to each other! Really.


	9. Chapter 9

Shawn woke to darkness.

"Evening, sleepyhead," said Henry, only to be greeted by the alarms on Shawn's heart monitor.

Henry turned up the light above his son's bed.

"Easy, hey, easy, Shawn, it's me, dad. Everything's okay. What's going on?" Henry said in a tone that lacked the confidence of an ex-cop as he placed his hands on Shawn's shoulders.

Shawn's eyes seemed to focus.

"Whoa, sorry, dad. What time is it? When I opened my eyes and it was dark … I thought my eyes…"

"No, you're okay, Shawn, your eyes are healing well, doc said so today. It was just that the lights were dimmed when you woke and you're used to better night vision." When Shawn swiped his hand over his face and took a deep breath, Henry added. "I promise, Shawn. I've never lied to you."

The nurse responded to the alarms and set about taking new vitals.

"Rough start?" she said kindly.

"'M'not used to sleeping all day," Shawn said, still slightly out of breath as she listened to his chest.

"Lungs are sounding better. Can you lean forward for me a bit?" she asked, sitting the bed up. She placed the bell of the stethoscope over different places on his back, pausing longer on others than some. She popped a thermometer in his mouth.

"Normal," she pronounced happily. Henry cleared his throat at that, grinning at his son's reaction.

So Shawn took her word for it. Normal. Was it normal not to remember having seen the doctor sometime today like his father said he did?

"The kitchen left your lunch and supper with us on the ward in the fridge, would you like me to have someone heat it and send it in?"

The word _no _was on the tip of Shawn's tongue, and in his stomach, which threatened to find something to toss back but failed only by sheer will.

'Uh, all this sleeping hasn't built up much of an appetite," Shawn said.

'Okay, think you can manage a protein shake?" she asked kindly. "Doc'll probably want to fire your IV back up if you don't have at least some of that." There was no hint of a threat in her voice but the fact that she was a new nurse was etched in her over-eager puppy encouragement. A smile grew on Shawn's face as he realized that he _was _somewhat … normal again, even though she had clearly meant his temperature. For instance, he observed that her white shoes had very little wear and tear, she still wore the silly nurse's hat proudly that wasn't strictly part of the uniform that modern nurses were required to wear, it was probably from her very recent grad photos, Shawn surmised.

"Mr. Spenser?" the nurse prompted as Shawn's still concussed mind slowly processed the first real rapid-fire observations he'd made since he'd been here.

"Oh, sorry, yes, please. I promise I'll drink a shake. Definitely don't want that thing back," Shawn said with a shiver, glimpsing Buzz's IV bag dripping slowly into the sleeping man's arm.

When the nurse left and Shawn didn't say anything, Henry's concern returned. "Shawn, what's bothering you?"

"You said the eye doctor came by today?"

"Yes," Henry said uncertainly.

"Um, I – I don't remember," Shawn whispered.

"You didn't wake up. He kept his _probing_ as you call it, to a minimum to let you sleep. He had a peek at your eyes but didn't shine any lights. Can't say I wasn't … you know, but he assured me that you were just sleeping deeply and that was best for your concussion."

"But I don't remember," Shawn repeated. _Someone touched me and I don't remember, that means that he … anyone could just…_

Henry had seen many victims in this position in his long career but it hurt to see his fearless, ever defiant son as a victim.

"Yin's gone, Shawn. He's not coming back."

"Concussion protocol sucks," Shawn deflected. "No TV, no video games, can't even read." _Nothing but thinking._

"I'll take the fact that you're bored as a good sign," Henry told his son. "How's Gus doing? I know today was the day he picks up his check and personal items."

"I don't know. He's seeing his folks today after picking up his last check and personal items from West Coast Pharmaceuticals. Boy are they ever going to hate me now. Probably ground him and ban us from playing together."

"You know that's right," Henry said in a perfect imitation of Gus.

Shawn's eyes were improving. He could see the bags under his father's eyes, see the toll that had been extracted. And for a moment, Shawn's thoughts turned toward his mother along with just a touch of anger. She was a trained psychiatrist for Pete's sake, and she let some psychopath have a picture of him to fixate on. Okay, maybe not her fault, she wasn't psychic, and she'd felt sorry for Yang, or whatever the woman's name really was. _Oh my God, I have no idea what her real name is. I mean it can't be that easy … can it? Could the cops … my dad have found the murderous pair simply by looking up the name, Yang on a birth record or something? No, it wasn't his dad's fault either. Maybe not even Yang's or whatever her name was, maybe she was twisted by her father since birth._

Maddie had yet to visit him in hospital. Well, that wasn't entirely her fault, she had been a lecturer on a multi-country circuit studying the mental health affects of hurricane devastation on islands that had been hardest hit in the years before. She was going to cut things short and fly home … well, not home, but to … _here_ as soon as possible. Shawn would never tell Henry that he finally understood how hard he had worked to cushion him from the fact that his mother had left not only his father but him too.

"Hey, dad? You look kinda tired. Maybe you should go get some sleep. I'm sorry I don't remember, but I guess you've been here all day." _I guess you've always been here… _

'You promise to drink that shake and I'll be going. Lassiter is coming by at nine."

Shawn's eyes grew wide. He didn't want to mention that Carlton had been reading to him and Buzz from a kid's book.

"Oh, and The Princess Bride is not just a children's book, Shawn, it's full of romance, swords, horses, rodents of unusual size, giants, murder, torture, more swords and more horses, all the good stuff, just like the movie. You'll love it," Henry said, donning his baseball cap and standing up with an audible popping noise from his back.

"I'll take your word for it," Shawn said. "Um, goodnight then, dad," _And thanks_.

Shawn pretended not to notice when Henry looked back but now that he thought of it, Henry had always looked back, at the school bus, at the skateboard ramp, at his motorcycle ... At him.

Shawn almost had to plug his nose to swallow the protein shake, but he managed to get it down where it swam around with the pancakes that were somehow still there from the morning.

Lassiter arrived; book tucked under his arm along with his coat.

"Protein shake, Spenser? You'd be better off with a streak, iron, B-12 … steak."

"This has all that, Lassieface, plus extra calcium for menop-au-my-God, this is for women!" Shawn squinted at the ingredient list on the bottle with a magnifier his dad had supplied for when he was cleared to read.

"Sounds about right," Carlton shrugged nonchalantly.

Shawn stared at the plastic bottle in his hand. The older woman on the label of the protein shake smiled up at him in a creepy, plastic sort of way. He was so ready to go home.

There wasn't much small talk. When Buzz woke for his bi-hourly probing as Shawn called it, Carlton began to read. Shawn noticed an unread newspaper in the pocket of the head detective's jacket. He tried to stay awake, but his eyes itched and hurt and holding them open brought about the headache that had threatened to return.

_I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts… _

XXXXXXX

Shawn woke. Carlton was gone and the pinkish sun was standing on its tiptoes to look in the window. Buzz was still asleep. In the hallway, the hustle and bustle of breakfast carts with wonky wheels brought the smells of powdered eggs and soggy toast. Shawn remembered the protein shake. _Okay, congealed omelette it is, _he thought_, anything to get out of here sooner._

Carlton's unread newspaper sat folded on a chair opposite of him. When his breakfast tray arrived, Shawn asked a young volunteer candy striper to pass him the newspaper and she did so without hesitation, eager to be of help. Buzz missed Shawn's charm as he peeked under the round, plastic lid from which a lazy haze of steam wafted. Whatever was under there wasn't interesting enough to hold the young man's attention and he turned to Shawn.

"Not supposed to be reading as far as I've heard," Buzz said. "Concussion protocol."

"Just like a cop," Shawn said admiringly still glancing at the magnified print.

"What'd you get?" McNabb asked timidly, as if to gauge whether Shawn was still comfortable sharing a room with the person who'd tried to kill him now that there were no visitors about.

"I don't know, but I think I'm changing my name to Sam-I-am," Shawn said, wrinkling his nose at the literally green looking egg yolk while still stealing glances at the first news of the outside world he'd had in over a week.

"Good morning," greeted Gus, his arms laden with Del Taco bags. "Breakfast burritos, mild, for sensitive stomachs of course."

Gus didn't even ask as he placed the hospital breakfast trays on the windowsill where by coincidence the cresting sun suddenly clouded over to match the steamed, opaque lids concealing the soggy horrors inside.

"Oh no you _won't_ eat them green eggs and ham," Gus said proudly in a sing-song voice, producing paper plates and cartons of milk and two items the men hadn't had in over a week. "Decaffeinated, sorry," he apologized. "Didn't want to interfere with any of your medications." He placed the two steaming mugs down in front of the men.

Buzz picked up his cup gingerly with his newly unbandaged hand and sniffed appreciatively at the surprisingly good brew. He seemed humbled by the inclusiveness.

"Vick dropped me off on her way to work," Gus explained as to how the food was still hot if he had no car. 'You look better," he added, laying out his best friend's food.

"Slept nearly twenty-four hours," Shawn said disgustedly.

"That's how you heal," Gus said, sounding too much like Henry. Spying the newspaper which crunched when Gus sat the head of the bed up, he added. "Reading with a concussion, Shawn, can set you back exponentially." He confiscated the newspaper, secretly intending to catch up on things himself once Shawn and Buzz fell asleep again or went for physiotherapy or whatever was in the plans today.

Shawn finally saw the pattern. "We have babysitters in addition to security detail now."

"Not babysitters," Gus protested. "Everyone just thought that after what you've been through, you could use some company".

Shawn knew that Gus would be there no matter what, as would Henry, Carlton on the other hand … but suddenly he was touched. After all, _Buzz _had been through so much. He, on the _other _other hand, was fine.

The burritos were bereft of any hot spices but surprisingly cheesy and flavorful. After the usual morning rounds with various doctors and the oh-so-embarrassing sponge bath, Francine came in and Shawn and Gus retreated to the atrium to feed the little sparrow. Shawn tired quickly and Gus pushed him back to his room and picked up the newspaper to read while Shawn assured him he was only resting his eyes and he could read the paper to him. Gus started off reading aloud but when Shawn's heart monitors indicated his best friend was asleep, he continued to read silently, his lips still moving nonetheless.

Shawn woke to the sound of a flushing toilet. The newspaper lay open on his bed. From the sounds of things, Gus's burrito didn't agree with him as a retching sound met his ears. Shawn picked up the newspaper to sneak a look after calling in a few words of comfort to Gus.

"Shawn! Don't!" _wretch_ "Don't look at the…" _wretch_.

Now he had to look for sure. He quickly got his magnifier from his tray desk and flipped to the page Gus had been on.

He might as well have eaten those green eggs and ham. _No, how can they … They can't - can they?_

The headline needed no magnification. It felt as if it burned into Shawn's entire consciousness through his eyes.

"Madame Tussaud's L.A. Location Exclusive True Crimes Exhibit Hosts the _Yin_famous Crimes Exhibit - Tickets on sale now for next month's opening." Shawn read aloud.

Gus stumbled from the bathroom looking as green as the eggs. "Shawn, I told you not to read that," he said sadly.

Things were made three times as bad when they looked over at Buzz. Francie had gone to see some of her co-workers upstairs to fill them in on how she and Buzz were doing and when she'd be back to work.

'But this'll glorify Yin and Yang," Buzz spat.

"Isn't there a law on the books that you can't profit from crimes?" Gus asked, one hand on his stomach and one on a paper towel on his chin.

'Only when it pertains to profiting from one's own crimes, not a third party who say, writes a book or something or …" Buzz gestured angrily toward the newspaper. "There won't even be a copywrite on … their images."

"I'm going to call Tussaud's and give them a piece of my mind," Gus said, thumbing through his cellphone.

Shawn's burrito lay half-eaten when before he'd been enthusiastically devouring it. He lay back on his pillows as Gus's angry retorts could be heard despite his best efforts to take the business into the hallway to spare Shawn and Buzz.

Hurried footsteps down the hallway came to Shawn's ears. He'd know his dad's worried stride anywhere.

"Shawn…" Henry sighed in relief as if he'd expected his son to somehow be gone. Shawn watched as his dad's eyes roved from his toes to his eyes, inspecting. "You okay?" he phished before Gus's shouting grew louder drowning out any hope Henry had that his son had been spared this horror story continuation.

"I already tried calling Tussaud's. Vick is seeking a court injunction, but she's already been told there's no legal precedent. They aren't breaking any laws. They're not obstructing justice; they're not filtering profits to … _them…_"

"They're catering to a bunch of sickos who don't stop to think what it's like to be…" Shawn's voice hitched in his throat. "Is it ever going to stop, dad?"

Henry paged Francine and sat down on Shawn's bed, holding his son as he sobbed for the first time in as long as he could remember. Gus came back in the room and sat quietly with his head in his hands as he and Buzz talked quietly trying not to intrude. For the first time ever, Gus felt helpless. No Thriller re-enactment or outlandish diversion could save Shawn unrelenting reality.

"They said something about higher insurance premiums and whatnot and changing demands of their tourists who have to be dragged from their mindless Kardashian-ass-watching on their couches. Said people want reality, reality and more reality. Rather watch other people's lives than live their own and maybe look up from their cellphones once in awhile. Who wants to see a bunch of cold-blooded killers? Anyone who wants to see that needs Jesus," Gus lamented. "It just happened, it's not a historical crime where there are no living victims or families left. What about that poor waitress? What about Mary? What about …" Gus looked at Buzz and then back over at Henry who was just lying a limp-as-a-ragdoll Shawn back onto his pillows before covering him up to his chin with blankets as if he could shield him from the world.

The nurse stood by and gave Henry some time before checking on her prone patient and then Buzz who sat stiffly, jaw locked in pain.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't eavesdropping, but I had to come when the monitors spiked," she said to the room at large, taking Buzz's pulse. "For my two cents, the whole thing is sick, you should start a petition. Here would be a good place to do it. We see the results and aftermath of crimes every day here." Turning to Henry she said. "I have to record what Shawn ate today; we need to watch his nutrition."

"Half a whole-wheat breakfast burrito with egg, cheese, tomatoes, spinach, and green peppers and, (he shook Shawn's milk carton) half a carton of milk. I think he might have finished it if, well you know – oh and uh, this um, protein shake for…" Henry trailed off looking at the older woman on the label of the shake bottle.

"Oh, you'll have to forgive Nancy, she's new. Nothing in there that he doesn't need anyway after all he'd been through, Calcium can't hurt." The nurse smiled apologetically.

Henry looked down at his son who right about now should be disagreeing with the nurse vehemently saying stupid things about having hot flashes and tender breasts from ingesting the shake meant for menopausal women.

Okay, I'll be back later, use the call button if you need anything, she said to Buzz and with one last sympathetic glance at Shawn, she took her leave.

Francine arrived looking paler than anyone thought possible. "You heard?"

Buzz nodded mutely.

XXXXXXXX

It was lonely watching Shawn's pain killer induced sleep, not that Gus _was_ watching Shawn sleep, 'cause that would be creepy. So he pretended to read Lassiter's book where even the Shrieking Eels seemed tame compared to Yin and Yang and the upcoming horror show planned by Madame Tussauds. So no, Gus wasn't watching, he was observing. Shawn usually looked like a drunken toddler when he slept, even at his desk when he was supposed to be reviewing case material. Now, his features were lined in concentrated frowns and he muttered incoherently through tightly pressed lips, lost in dreams where Gus couldn't reach him.

"Hello, my name is Burton Guster, you almost killed my friend, prepare to die," Gus whispered to the ghost in the room. Sure, Yin was dead but Tussauds was about to resurrect him, elevate him to stardom the likes of which he craved in life. The hand that held the gun that shot Yin flexed convulsively. Gus bit back his guilt and then with even more quickly resolved revulsion, realized that he no longer felt the need to scream and or vomit thinking about what he'd done to Yin. He'd changed. He wasn't proud of it but the grief over Mary and all of Yin and Yang's victims weighed more heavily than the guilt for ending the psychotic killer.

Rubbing his face, Gus put the book down. He'd been putting off his usual chores. It was time to rob Peter to pay Paul to make the rent on Psych and balance the bills.

Gus pulled some financial records from his now mostly useless briefcase. It would be some time before Chief Vick could reach some sort of compensation for Psych because of red tape and Shawn would be in no fit shape to solve cases for awhile. With no income from Gus' _other _job as Shawn called it, they would be lucky to have an office out of a doughnut shop booth once the Psych lease was up.

And speaking of financial records … Gus clutched the banking information Pierre Despereaux had given him for the transfer from their account of an obscene amount of money into the art thieves' account. The big, red, zero account balance stood out to mock Gus. Until…

XXXXXXXXXXX

Hours later, Pierre Despereaux smiled smugly from Gus' laptop in a pre-recorded reply message. Gus pressed play and the message began.

_Dear Gus and Shawn_, Despereaux said as if he was a living, handwritten letter.

_Gus reminds me that I owe you one, whatever owing one one means. Nevertheless, I find myself a fright bored as a gentleman of leisure. As to the problems Gus outlined in lengthy detail, I must say that I agree with your assessment of the situation and trust that what I am about to reveal will be kept confidential, not that it matters, of course, when I want something, I get it. Read carefully because this encrypted letter will self destruct in two minutes - Wait for i-i-it!_ Pierre's piercing blue eyes seemed to bore into Shawn and Gus separately as he ended the call by calling both their names while seemingly looking directly at each in turn before the image froze.

Shawn and Gus leaned forward, visions from all of the spy movies they'd ever watched dancing in their heads. Gus grabbed a pen and paper to write down any important information that Despereaux or whomever the charismatic man really was, was about to unleash in text.

A laugh of sudden animation on the screen startled Gus into a rather girly punch of his laptop screen aimed for Despereaux's pearly white teeth, all of which showed in his mirth.

"Shawn, Guster, how are you, lads? I knew you'd enjoy my little joke," Pierre said as he swiveled in a rich leather wing back chair which sat teasingly in view of an easel on which it was possible to view just a corner of an obviously old, cracked oil-on-canvas with what was possibly a shiny, black, ancient shoe or a rotten pear, the first more of an indication of an old masters.

Shawn was, of course, delighted by Despereaux's antics. Gus rubbed his fist and casually looked for cracks in his laptop screen. He'd never fully forgiven the man for making him miss Potter Con when he and Shawn had visited him in the U.K.

Gus squinted at the corner of the painting, leaning over as if doing so would change his perspective to see better.

"Is that a da vin-" Gus began before Pierre readjusted the easel out of view. Despereaux had the audacity to wink at him as Gus's jaw dropped.

Suddenly serious, Despereaux told Shawn and Gus that he was glad that they'd escaped from the monster they'd encountered.

"Gentleman, as I abhor violence, I am happy to inform you that I will help you pro bono on this venture to rid the world of the demonic likenesses of your nemesis," Pierre said, and he _did _sound happy about it.

"Pro bono? On our last case, you cost us account closure fees and income tax payments on interest fees which you also took, not to mention…" Gus stammered before realizing that he was actually getting exactly what he'd asked from the enigmatic blonde. Well, minus a meet-and-greet with Ron Weasly. But seeing Shawn light up for the first time in over a month melted away Gus' indignation.

But Shawn was even happier. In the fake psychic's mind, the monologue theme from The A-Team played, _Today, still wanted by the government, Despereaux survives as a soldier of fortune/man of leisure. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him … maybe you can hire, Despereaux._

"Now, just so you understand, I don't normally slum in wax figure art, if one can truly call a hairy candle art, I'm more a man of sculpture, marble, granite." And damned if Despereaux didn't turn the angle of his camera yet again just as Gus and Shawn noticed a white, sleek bicep peeking around a shroud of a sheet dust cover.

"Is that a Michaelang-" Gus stammered as Pierre cut in.

"Be that as it may, Wax figures are typically priced at three hundred thousand dollars, so while not as well guarded as let's say, _David or Venus, _we can expect some measures of protection in place." Despereaux teasingly turned the camera away from the sculpture.

"Well, as Tussade's monstrosities are made in the U.K., that's your neck of The Forbidden Forest, we figure you can just nip in and torch the suckers and be done with it," Gus said, sounding a bit like the Godfather making Despereaux an offer he couldn't refuse in order to pay back his debt to them.

"My degree in clinical psychology would beg to differ, Guster," Pierre said as Shawn sat watching the banter between the two like a racquetball match from heaven. His idol and his best friend, arguing over what was best for him, it didn't get any better than that.

"You have a degree in … then why are you an art thief? Psychologists make a fortune, besides, I heard that Yin and Yang's fiberglass bodies are already finished and the wax heads are nearly done, just waiting for paint It would be easy for a – psychologist/secret-agent-man like you to just go get rid of them," Gus insisted.

"You misunderstand why I point out my honors degree," Despereaux sighed, once again impressing Shawn with his keen mind. "You see, not only do I firmly believe that in order to heal, you, Shawn, and this McNabb fellow you told me about need closure, but the public in America where this horrendous crime took place will not gain the full impact of the utter destruction and shunning of these violent symbols if it happens a continent away. Plus if the statues are destroyed here, it's that much more likely that the artists will simply start again on replacements because there will be no outcry, no condemnation or support for the dismantling of them as I intend to incite."

"You are a genius," Gus whistled. "A thief, a con." He was going to add _user_, but looking at the way in which Despereaux studied Shawn as though he could see through him and with a certain concern that even Gus deemed genuine as far as he could tell with the crook, he kept quiet. If Despereaux could in fact give any of them closure, all of the misadventures with the man would have been more than worth it.

"My sources tell me that the figures will be delivered to Hollywood Tussauds a week from Tuesday. I suggest you get some rest and wait for my signal when the game's afoot."

"Sherlock!" Gus and Shawn repeated in delight.

Despereaux rolled his eyes good-naturedly, a move that looked foreign on his normally sneaky façade. He really did have a soft spot for Shawn and he had a phone call to make to one Ron Weasly -er – Rupert Grint.

"Well, until next week then, boys," Despereaux said, winking before his screen went dark before his camera touched ever so slightly both on the hidden bicep and the pear-or-shoe. In all, Shawn had said not three words to his idol. At first, when Despereaux had mentioned Shawn's need for closure, Shawn had been keen, now, he was both keen and scared. The thought of seeing Yin again … and then he realized, he'd still never actually seen Yin, he'd been blind during the attack and Yin had been wearing a mask on the night he attacked Abigail and Juliet. Did he really want to see the man who'd nearly cost him everything – even in wax?

A/N I love Despereaux and he does owe Shawn and Gus. Thanks so much for reading and for the reviews, they have made me smile. The story has one or two more chapters and I think I might write a humorous epilogue to end things off because laughter is important. Be safe everyone, and please be kind to everyone.


	10. Chapter 10

It was Tuesday again. Shawn was beginning to hate them even more than Mondays. After all, Monday never brought a crazy son of an electrocuted worker out to kill him in a dirty swimming pool at a murder camp, or the prospect of seeing Yin in wax. He and Gus both deeply regretted watching the movie House of Wax when they were younger just because they'd been enamored with Paris Hilton.

"Well, Shawn, your eyes are coming along as expected. Another week and it's likely you'll be able to read from the eye chart in order to see if there's been any lasting damage," the ophthalmologist said.

Shawn was about to open his mouth and Gus didn't have to be psychic to know what his friend was about to say. "Suck it, Shawn, you're not taking that test now, I know you memorized the whole chart and the doctor doesn't want you straining your eyes unduly so just wait, and doc? If I were you, I'd get a different chart to test him with."

"Duly noted, Mr. Guster," the eye doctor laughed. "Actually, I have a heads up on that from L.A.." Turning to Shawn, he said, "I know it's scary but trust me, your eyesight is improving, your depth perception, all of it."

Shawn nodded mutely but gave the eye specialist a small smile.

"I hear you'll be going home in three days, have you made arrangements to stay with a friend or relative?"

"He'll be staying with me," Henry said, strolling in looking better rested than he had in over a week.

"Excellent," the doctor said enthusiastically.

"Can't you just hook me up with a seeing eye dog, doc?" Shawn begged. "I've got a doghouse built and everything."

Henry just sighed at his son and sat down as he and the doctor exchanged a _kids l_ook.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shawn was exhausted from his physiotherapy session In which he, his dad and Gus had all participated, showing Shawn how to properly use his crutches and Henry and Gus ways in which to assist Shawn upon his release from hospital. Henry went home shortly after eating lunch with Shawn and Gus in the cafeteria and Gus turned on his laptop as soon as he was sure Henry hadn't "forgotten something" for which he would have to return and catch them talking to Despereaux.

"You're late," Despereaux accused the two men until his head appeared larger as he squinted into screen. "Good God, man, what happened to your eyes? They were looking much better the last time we spoke."

"Eye test," Shawn said. "Drops, lights, poking, prodding, _probing_."

Despereaux looked close to saying something and Shawn was glad he didn't. The truth was, physiotherapy had been excruciating and he'd been glad to blame the eye drops for the moisture in his eyes despite biting his tongue to hold in any indications of pain as he used crutches and stretched disused muscles over the last few days.

"Are you sure you and Mr. McNabb are going to be up to what we've been discussing?" Pierre asked.

"Yes, sir," said McNabb getting snakingly to his feet." M'not committed here anymore. 'M'not under arrest."

"Buzz, that's amazing! When did you find out?" Shawn asked.

"Once you said – that you weren't - pressing charges," Buzz said uncomfortably, "and all the lab results were analyzed, and based on the fact that Yin and Yang had killed or done permanent damage to other officers over the years, Internal Affairs has closed the investigation into my culpability. Vick told me yesterday, but I didn't know how to tell you. I mean, Shawn, I still did this to you." Buzz waved his hand in the air toward Shawn.

"You just gestured to all of me," said Shawn, imitating a certain cartoon dragon tamer. "Look, Buzz, we've talked about this. You're going to have to find a way to let this go. I have. At least that part."

"And I have the perfect way to _get over it_ as you said," Despereaux said before insisting that Buzz sit down before he fall down. He turned to Gus as though the other two could not hear his lowered voice.

"When is Officer McNabb due to be released?"

Gus could only look at the officer.

"At least another week they say but I could sign myself out against medical advice," Buzz vowed.

"We don't have a week," Despereaux said. "But your exoneration does free up some resources. Despereaux looked at the two injured men as though contemplating whether it was against even his medical advice for them to be engaging in what he'd planned.

"Gentlemen, at midnight tonight," Despereaux began, but in Shawn's head he heard, _the mission, should you choose to accept it … _and accept it they would…

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The night nurse sighed as she picked up the post-it notes stuck to both Shawn's and Buzz's bedside tables next to her patient's empty beds. Shawn's note read like a Breakfast-Club-style explanation of why he was not in his bed and McNabb's note was apologetic and determined in nature. She had some phone calls to make and had to seriously wonder why the two men had been released from the psychiatric ward in the first place.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"They did what!" Henry Spenser shouted into the phone at the poor nurse who quickly excused herself from the verbal abuse to make yet another call about an errant patient.

Henry dialled Chief Vick. He hadn't called the Chief at home since she'd given him her number when Shawn and Buzz had been injured and he had hoped to never do that, but here he was at midnight about to call in every favor he'd ever been owed by the department, even from before her time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

And … in a stretch limousine not so far, far away, Buzz McNabb's long legs were stretched out on the luxurious leather seats while Shawn's cast leg was propped up on the other side while Gus sat at the rear facing bend in the seat trying not to regret the events he'd set in motion. Buzz watched a wheel of the wheelchair spin lazily in the wind through the back window of the shiny black car. Despereaux had thought of everything. Hopefully…

Gus knocked on the window separation of the limo when Shawn spotted a Del Taco sign above the highway overpass.

"Really?" came the indignant voice of Pierre Despereaux himself as the separation window rolled down to reveal a shock of blonde hair being unleashed from beneath a chauffer's cap.

"Pierre!" shouted Shawn happily though he mentally kicked himself for not noticing who had helped him out of the wheelchair and into the car back in Santa Barbara.

"Don't worry, Shawn, you're probably just preoccupied with going back to Tussauds," Gus said, reading his friend's mind. "Even my super sniffer didn't notice his signature scent. I thought it was just some dude Despereaux had sent."

"I had thought of sending a flunky but as they say, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself," Pierre said happily. "Now, if you gentlemen want to eat, simply open the fridge and take anything you want. The microwave is just above the disco ball."

In order not to talk about what they were going to do in San Francisco and end up chickening out, Gus set to work opening jars of caviar and other delicacies.

Buzz, ever polite ran his tongue over a fish egg encrusted cracker and squinted in disgust. Shawn for his part wouldn't let any of the slimy stuff touch his tongue.

The limo left the freeway and with an air of dejection Pierre Despereaux soon announced to a metal speaker that indeed, yes, he would like fries with - _that._ 'It's like riding in a car with five-year-olds," the blonde man said between bites of taco which he had to admit was far superior to cold fish spawn.

XXXXXXXXX

When the limo pulled up to the loading bay doors of Tussauds hours later, Buzz, pale from being jarred around in a car when he was far too ill to be out of hospital woke from his impromptu taco induced slumber. No one said anything as one by one, the lights around the doors flickered and died. For all the glitz and glimmer of the pubic entrance, the back entrance of the famous waxworks had all the pomp and pageantry of a mausoleum and not of the celebrity variety, Gus noted.

Gus got the wheelchair from the back of the car and Shawn grabbed the crutches that had been lying along the floor. Buzz protested riding in the wheelchair all the way up the loading ramp claiming that Shawn was the one with the bum knee. Gus had to agree that Shawn needed a chair also but he understood that showing any weakness, even to a wax Yin could undo his already fragile friend.

Despereaux seemed to know exactly where they were to go after casually typing a code into the security doors and easily slipping inside. That didn't surprise any of them after watching how easily the man had slipped from prison and highly secured museums and mansions at his ease and leisure.

Shawn's brow was beaded with sweat by the time they reached the storage and preparation area ignoring all the sightless eyes boring into their backs as they seemed to rove in silent query as to what the intruders were doing in their domain. There weren't many new arrivals. Two wooden crates with shipping labels lay on the cement floor like sarcophaguses and Shawn had never cared for mummies and cared even less for the manmade creatures about to be bestowed upon their senses any minute now. Despereaux and Gus got right to work with pry bars that had been handily laying next to the wooden crates.

Inside the sarcophagus, was another box that looked like it belonged to a crazed magician who'd cut someone in half or quarters and couldn't figure out how to put them back together again. Shawn vowed that he'd never make fun of Gus vomiting at the sight of a dead body again because right now, just the thought of what was under the final layer of cloth wrapped around the emerging figure of a woman was making the tacos he'd eaten swim around in his gut as surely as if he'd just eaten the dreadful fish eggs Despereaux had offered.

"Gah," whispered Gus as two perfectly formed, feminine hands placed almost like a matching pair of new shoes in a box were revealed, pink, with perfectly manicured much too real looking fingernails. Shawn was glad that he couldn't see the fine details because he'd never forget Yang's finger placed menacingly, lovingly, on the trigger of a tiny bomb she'd planted on his mother at the drive-in movie theater.

Gus dumped the contents of the small box unceremoniously onto the floor. Might as well get started.

"You okay?" Gus asked Shawn who stood leaning upon his crutches at a discreet distance beside McNabb who he was now having regrets about springing from the hospital given his slightly greenish hue. "Maybe you and McNabb should go sit in the limo?"

"Yeah, we're fine," Shawn said. "We're not couch tomatoes, we're here to sauce these suckers," Shawn vowed.

"It's couch _potatoes_, Shawn," Gus said, relieved that Shawn was still holding some humor.

"I've heard it both ways."

And for once, Gus let it go.

Pierre held Yang's wax head up in his hands as if he'd just guillotined the villain for his crimes against humanity. There was no hair to grasp the grotesque thing so one hand was cupped beneath the pointy chin and one on the smooth, round scalp. For a usually very serene and calm individual, even Despereaux looked as though he was afraid the thing might bite him. His fingers were tucked away from the palm which supported it as the eyes seemed to stare mutely from the skull.

"She must've told them to eat cake one too many times, Gus," Shawn whistled. "They decapitated her."

"You know that's right, I mean, I love cake but four out of five dentists recommend that we refrain from eating cake every day." Gus said as he flinched away as Despereaux indicated that he should retrieve Yin's head.

"They were not decapitated," Pierre said with long suffering patience. "There is some assembly required just like your silly toys back at Psych."

"Gah, where's my thirty-nine-and-a-half-inch-pole when I need it?" Gus shivered as he plucked Yin's head from the box using the nostrils to hold it away from his body bowling-ball-style.

McNabb cleared his throat as he levered himself up from the wheelchair and bent gingerly to try to pluck the fiberglass body of Yin from the crate.

"Let me," Gus said, plunking Yin's forehead into Buzz's hands. "These bodies are fiberglass, probably heavy, I'll only need my ten-inch pole for this job." As the figure stood to its shoulder, headless height, Gus changed his mind. "Nope, thirty-nine-and-a-half," he shuddered. The thing was naked and more or less anatomically correct.

Shawn scrunched his eyes to try to make out if there was anything they could smash the macabre figures up with. He told no one that he was, for the first time, glad that he couldn't make out the fine details of the figures before him and he resisted a re-enactment of the Lionel Ritchie video where the blind man touches a face to discern what his subject _looked_ like as Pierre tossed him Yang's head as if an obscene game of football was about to begin. But it wasn't football after all. Shawn gasped, his breath taken from him as he caught the head and it quickly became apparent that the game would be hot potato as he tossed the ugly thing to Buzz who was otherwise occupied in horror with Yin's head.

Yin's head cracked to the floor as Buzz dropped it to catch Yang and Gus kicked Yang's globe out of sheer nerves, retching the whole time.

"Gentlemen," Pierre scolded, his voice not without sympathy. "It is obvious I was right. You need closure. Now, Gus, help me assemble these monsters and let's get on with it."

"What do you mean, assemble? You must be out of your damned mind," Gus tsked.

"Closure," Pierre said quietly, nodding to Shawn and McNabb who seemed to be reliving their private horrors as both men backed away from the boxes.

Deep down, Gus knew that man was right, _damn him_. Gus bent and retrieved two wigs Small cannisters of touch up paint labelled for different body parts rolled across the floor.

"Even Ikea gives better assembly directions than this mess," Gus complained as he snapped on the wigs which fit perfectly on the assigned melons as Gus began calling Yin and Yang's heads to take away from the terror of the tasks. Gus didn't want to be there any longer than they had to be so instead of using the touch up paint provided for the ear that had broken away from Yang's head he flicked his Bic lighter and melted the sucker back on using his finger to smooth out the edges.

Retching could be heard from the corner of the room where Shawn stood in shadow hunched over a basketball hoop he'd placed strategically over a garbage can after swiping it from a box labelled NBA display.

"Swish, nuthin' but net," Shawn gasped. "Sorry man, the wax smell…"

Gus stepped into the corner and put his hand on his best friend's shoulder. "You sure you want to be here?" he asked, handing Shawn a tissue to wipe his mouth.

"Yeah, McNabb needs this," Shawn said, sweat glistening on his brow as McNabb sat in his wheelchair staring down into Yin's face which was now framed in stringy, black hair. McNabb looked catatonic and Gus doubted the young officer was even hearing them.

"That's just sick," Shawn rasped as Despereaux pulled a wetsuit from Yin's box and began fitting the neoprene onesie onto the fiberglass body. Shawn shut his eyes to try to drown out the image of that night on the pier when Yin had been so close he could have just reached out and grabbed as the murderer simply nodded his head in the direction in which he'd stowed Abigail to drown while Juliette faced death on the clock tower.

"Breath, Shawn," Gus instructed rubbing small circles on Shawn's back.

"Oh dear," muttered Despereaux and no one in the room even knew that the man was capable of anything but eloquent speech until now as he continued to rummage through the boxes running his hand through his magnificent hair several times and wiping a hand across his furrowed brow. Pierre Despereaux never furrowed…

" , a word?"

Gus gave a parting, encouraging smile at Shawn and patted McNabb on the shoulder as he pried Yin's head from the officer's trembling hands.

"The stand," Pierre whispered.

"Oh, my – no – nope, we can't erect this setup. Let's just torch 'em and get out of here. Shawn and McNabb don't need this much closure."

On one side of the display was boards painted to resemble wet pier boards and on the other a large clock that looked like it could snap together in four places to form a smaller version of the one O'Hara had been tied to.

"What is it?" McNabb called hollowly from his chair. Gus held up a fake pier board.

McNabb stood to his full height. Gus had almost forgotten how tall the cop was until he stormed from the room as fast as his healing body would allow. The sound of shattering glass was heard and before Gus could even get to the door, McNabb was returning with an axe in his hands from a fire box at the end of the hall.

For one insane moment to join all that would follow, Gus stepped in front of Shawn, afraid that something evil had been reactivated in McNabb's mind but Buzz walked right by them. He waited until Despereaux backed away, hands raised.

The axe rose above McNabb's head and he grunted in agony every time the blade came down on the boxes containing the stands and sets for the Yin Yang display. The fiberglass bodies shattered into fine glassy, stringy shards of grey and beige, the wetsuit flailing as though alive and being attacked by a shark but maintaining its human form until hunks of neoprene thread floated in the fluorescent light and the unmistakeable scent of rubber filled the air.

Shawn's body flinched with every swing of the axe.

"Mr. McNabb," Despereaux said, "I think it's done. They won't be able to fix this."

Despereaux had balls, Shawn and Gus knew that but if they ever doubted the man was some sort of ninja before, his next move left them with no doubt. Pierre stepped behind the somewhat taller man and deftly brought the wax wielding arm behind McNabb's back. McNabb dropped the axe from nerveless fingers, bringing his hand out before his face as it was let go almost simultaneously in a showing of trust by PIerre.

McNabb's legs buckled and Gus rushed forward and caught him and lowered him to the floor with Despereaux's help. McNabb's eyes closed as he fought for breathe.

"S -sorry. Just – I jpictured Shawn and Abigail on the pier – that night after – how could anyone th-think this-" McNabb's arm wavered in the direction of the debris field around him and under him, "was – a good idea. And the clock? O'Hara almost quit that night…"

As Gus and Despereaux tended to a worryingly exhausted McNabb, Shawn looked through his bleary eyes toward the heads of Yin and Yang which had rolled as if in self preservation out of the debris field. Shawn spied another steel waste bin and deposited the heads into the pail, reminding himself to breath through his revulsion. He deposited the heads in the steel bin onto Buzz's vacated seat and slipped quietly from the room.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shawn squinted down the hallways though what he really wanted was to close his blurred eyes altogether as he used the wheelchair to limp along to find the room where it had all began. The sound of Buzz's ribs rebreaking with every axe swing replayed in his mind as his only company among the silent watchers along the red carpet. Even the friendly, green ogre wasn't companionable like it had been when he and Gus had first visited.

"Tom," Shawn greeted insanely as he walked by the famous bus stop bench on which Forest Gump sat.

"Sorry, Dave," he said as he took in the Baywatch display which was still bereft of its AED's and backboards. He couldn't tell if Queen Elizabeth looked mad at him for the masks he'd placed, he really couldn't see fine facial features yet. "Just taking out the trash, Lizzie."

Shawn took a deep breath over his parched throat. His mouth felt like he could grow cotton in it as he opened the door of the melting room or whatever the kids were calling it these days.

The huge vat sat in the middle of the room like it always had. Shawn had to remind himself how stupid it was to think that perhaps it had been hauled away as evidence. He couldn't see the temperature gauge on the side of the vat, so he just turned the dial as far to the _lefty loosey_ as possible. He pushed the wheelchair up to the metal steps and the heads one by one up to the platform.

"After you," he mimed for Yang. "No, after you," he said in a feminine voice as he threw Yang's head, the black hair swirling around to land across her eyes like her bangs had done in life. And with a thrill of horror, might still, Shawn reasoned, because Yang was still alive, tucked away in a mental health facility never to see the light of day again.

Shawn bit the inside of his cheek as he gripped the metal rails in either side of the steps and lifting his injured knee, he hoisted himself up one painful step at a time. It was satisfying to see that the vat was empty. He kicked the heads into the vat and could vaguely make out the two sets of eyes staring up accusingly at him as the vat began to hiss.

Smoke rose from the vat. Shawn was glad for the slightly metallic tang that overshadowed the smell of wax from the overheated metal bottom. He just couldn't care if he'd turned it up too high. His shaking legs beckoned him to sit. He flattened his braced leg and drew the other leg to his body, his arms around his own torso cold despite the heat rising from the crackling, spitting vat. His cheeks puffed out in an effort not to vomit from the smell of the melting wax. He closed his eyes as the marble eyes rolled from their molded orbs. Gus would say they reminded him of Mad Eye Moody's magical eye. But Gus wasn't here and suddenly Shawn felt very much alone. The walk down endless hallways to get here pushing the steel can and the weight of the wheelchair had exhausted him. Small explosions of glass shattering brought him back to his senses just as tiny shards of porcelain leapt to pierce his face and arms as the real hair wigs caught fire filling the air with putrid odours only firefighters should know. Smoke billowed almost lazily from Yin's mouth as if the man were blowing his last smoke rings.

"So, more wax, less heat, no eyeballs or hair next time in Satan's stew," Shawn coughed as he heaved himself up the metal rail feeling a trickle of blood run down his forehead into his semi useless eyes. _Great!_

"Shawn!" Gus yelled as he ran into the room unseen by his friend who was halfway down the stairs.

"Come on, I gotcha, Shawn," Gus rasped taking his friend's arm around his shoulder as the room filled more thickly with smoke. Depositing his friend into the wheelchair, Gus pulled the door open and put his back to it as he pushed Shawn through. Gus reached into his bag attached to the back of the chair and handed Shawn a bottle of water and then poured some of it onto the shirt which he took off and placed around his mouth and nose as he went back into the melting room.

Gus found a hose that was used to cool new molds and turned off the vat. He climbed the stairs almost by heart through the thick smoke. He took a deep breath intending to hold it until he was clear of the room as he sprayed the cold water onto the fire below. Steam pushed the smoke toward the ceiling and Gus chanced a glance through squinted eyes against the heat that rose from the gooey contents below. What he saw made his blood run cold and he was sure he was seeing things.

At the bottom of the vat, was the Ying Yang symbol, the grey masses of wax coming together to form the circle, the burnt black hair swirling between the two sides to clearly mark the dark and the light, the masculine and the feminine. _Balance_. The two dots … intact, black glass pupils blown out of their whites of Yin and Yang's eyes punctuating the horror. Gus swallowed as the smoke swirled to obliviate his obvious hallucination from the melted heads whose pupils looked up into his very soul as they were swallowed, hissing and boiling as heat met cold. Gus put his thumb over the end of the hose to increase the pressure and aimed, hoping to distort the nightmare once and for all.

"Mr. Guster, it's time we got these boys back to the hospital." Came Despereaux's voice through the now very dense smoke.

Gus didn't respond until he felt a tug on the hose in his hands.

"They're gone, Gus. Come on now." Coached Despereaux. Gus threw the hose down into the hole out of reach of the flames. He heard Despereaux beside the vat.

"Did you turn it back on?" Gus stammered as he was led through the doors.

"No, I turned the smoke detectors off, Mr. Guster, which is why we aren't joined by the fire department but according to my very expensive watch, we should be vacating the premises very shortly."

McNabb was gently placed in the wheelchair and Shawn hobbled along on crutches aided by Gus. After a couple of minutes, the smoke and exertions got the best of Shawn who'd let go of Gus who'd needed to help Despereaux to jostle Buzz into a more comfortable position.

Shawn wiped sweat from his brow, stopping to prop both crutches under one arm to rest.

"'S'hot in here, Gus," Shawn panted, glancing behind them as if being followed by spirits which refused to die in his mind. Sometimes it was fun to be able to remember everything, to notice everything. Sometimes not.

"Gus, the wax – did you see…"

"No, Despereaux told me. It's just a figment of everyone's imagination. Coincidence. PTSD," Gus assured but his fingers absently pried his suddenly too-tight top button of his shirt away from his neck.

"I need to sit down," Shawn gasped as sweat beaded down his spine suddenly freezing him as it met the cool temperatures of the hallways of the wax museum.

Despereaux sighed, putting the brake on Buzz's wheelchair to assess the young officer who stoically reassured him that he was just fine even as his teeth chattered in pain. Seeming to make up his mind, the blonde man took Gus aside.

"We're going to call a rest stop for a few minutes," Despereaux announced, tossing two bottles of water to Gus and instructing him to make Shawn and Buzz drink. Shawn couldn't argue, he sat back-to against a manmade hill of Astroturf and Styrofoam and swished some water around his parched mouth but couldn't swallow any past the enormous lump in his throat. Unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks and pried at his lips to parch him further.

Buzz was lowered onto the floor in front of a pair of white clad legs sitting on a bench and Gus swiped a blanket from a Harry Potter display nearby.

"Cool, the invisibility cloak," Buzz murmured in boyish admiration even as he bit his lip in pain wishing the thing was real. He looked to Shawn whose shoulders shook as hopeful finality fell upon them.

Gus's heart broke watching Shawn's head jerk slightly in analyzation of every detail of the last few years. His best friend's lips formed soundless words that Gus could read from Abigail, to Juliet, to dad, Buzz and himself. The name Mary hung on his lips longest. Shawn would never forgive himself for thinking that Mary Lightly could have possibly been Yin. The young crime profiler spent years trying to bring an end to the Yin Yang killings and ended up murdered by Yin and Shawn could think of a million signs of his innocence after the fact.

"Stop it, Shawn," Gus said tiredly. "You couldn't have known. And think of how proud Mary would be right now."

"Proud Mary, you're funny," Shawn sobbed, flinching when Gus's hand tried to rest on his shoulder. It jarred Gus to his core that Shawn hadn't seemed to see him coming.

"Shawn, follow my finger," Gus instructed, suddenly concerned but trying to keep it out of his voice.

Shawn obliged only out of guilt at the scared sound in his best friend's voice. Well, as best as he could anyway. His head followed the vague hand waving in front of his face but when he answered Gus' question of how many fingers he was holding up as six, Gus informed him that he was _not _the six fingered man.

"You're going to see the doctor as soon as we're out of here," Gus ordered.

"I can see, Gus, I'm just teasing," Shawn said but his voice was small. After all, the lights in the museum were dimmed, seeing only shadows was okay – right?

Despereaux wasn't back from wherever he'd gone. Gus had a flutter of distrust that the man had left them red-handed in the creepy place where light smoke strobed through the muted night auxiliary lighting like fog in a horror movie and the wax figures seemed angry that they had to stand at attention instead of get on with their night like in the Night At The Museum movie. Gus got up stiffly from his crouched position to check on Buzz. He looked over his shoulder. The white hockey mask glowed down the way from the hallway of horrors, empty sockets staring through him nonetheless. Now Gus wished the invisibility cloak was real as well. He took Buzz's pulse and raised the officer's head to allow him to sip some cool water before approaching a golden statue of King Tut and Liz Taylor – or Cleopatra, one of those old black and white ladies anyway. He plucked the plaque from the plinth and brought it to his best friend.

"Read this," Gus demanded tiredly of Shawn."

"Concussion protocol," Shawn sniffed smartly. "Can't."

"That didn't stop you from reading my newspaper," Gus hissed. "Now read."

Shawn snuck a peak toward where Gus had been moments before. He could make out the outline of a figure and squinted as the gold paint glistened even in the dim night lighting. That and the fact that Gus had whispered under his breath nervously as he sung _Walk Like An Egyptian _under his breath, gave Shawn all he needed to lie, um, fabricate, um, yeah, lie.

"Read the plaque, Shawn."

Shawn squinted at the plaque smartly as Gus regretted his request as Shawn wiped sooty hands over his eyes.

"Ancient Egypt was old," Shawn began the same way he did when improvising every single history presentation he was given in school. "It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants had to live elsewhere."

"It's hieroglyphics Shawn," Gus said tiredly.

"I've heard it both ways," Shawn insisted, lifting his chin, a small, ironic smile gracing his sooty face as he read the real information from the plaque. "And I know it's the Sahara."

The sympathetic crier let his tears flow in relief. "Thank God, Shawn," he whispered. "I was afraid your eyes were damaged more."

"See, Gus, you thought I was crying before? Nah, I was washing my eyes."

Gus let it go and didn't point out the breathless hitches in Shawn's saving-face speech as Shawn continued to _wash his eyes. _

XXXXXXXXXXX

"What have those two – _three_ idiots got themselves into now?" came Carlton Lassiter's voice into what had to be the best dream Gus ever had in which he hunted a six fingered man. He raised his sword arm in defense, his right eye opening a crack and then both eyes opening like curtains widely as if disturbed by a bugle medley at a military base.

"Must've fell asleep," Gus said guiltily. They were in the limo. Despereaux was nowhere to be seen. Shawn's head lolled on his shoulder until Gus pried himself away gently and reached for his best friend's wrist, sighing in relief to find a strong pulse.

"Rough night, gentlemen?" Juliet said leaning into the window of the limo, sounding far gentler than she felt at the worry the men had put her – well, the department through in the last seven and a half hours.

"Get an orderly and get him inside," barked Lassiter as he leaned into the limo and shook his head at the injured but obviously sleeping McNabb."

Shawn stirred and tried to cram the first word that escaped in terror from his mouth back in when he woke.

"Dad!" The huge lit up H from the top of the hospital reflected down, penetrating even the tinted windows of the limo and reflecting blue neon streams into Shawn's eyes making him look impossibly pale.

"Right here, son," came Henry Spencer's voice trying to sound angry but settling for relieved as he crowded past Gus who was stretching his strained muscles from being in the car.

Francine got as far as Gus before she was stopped by the passing gurney on its way to extricate her husband from the double-parked limousine in front of the hospital's emergency ward. She was shouting into her phone and at Gus at the same time. "He's here, he's alive, we're at Santa Barbara General."

Everyone seemed to have forgotten Gus as Shawn and Buzz were whisked inside, both talking and alert but exhausted and in pain. He leaned against the wall of the hospital and stared at the long, abandoned car. To be sure, he crept to the driver's side and inspected the interior. A chauffer's cap sat on the seat. He pressed the button and lowered the partition glass not bothering and too tired to move to the back seat. Empty Del Taco wrappers littered the floor. Crunched up water bottles peaked from under the otherwise pristine carpeting on the floor. One crutch rested firmly against the leather seat leaving an indentation. The wheelchair was nowhere to be seen and Gus couldn't remember leaving the museum, let alone carrying Buzz and or Shawn. One thing and one thing only carried Gus from his slouched position in the driver's side window to fly to the back door and fling it open.

The invisibility cloak hung rather elegantly over the back seat. Gus sat down and let his fingers slide over the silky material. Sure, it was a replica and didn't produce invisibility, but it was still magnificent. A note was attached. Gus smiled at the details but as he read the note, written in acid green ink expecting Dumbledore's words to Harry about the cloak's uses, he gasped.

Dear Guster, Twenty points to Gryffindor for outstanding bravery. Shawn is now paid in full; you can expect your invitation to a meet-and-greet with Mr. Grint to arrive forthwith. I no longer owe you one. As for my involvement with any of this. Never happened. Kindest regards, P. D.

"What?" said Gus aloud to no one. Gus looked around and pulled the invisibility cloak from the car and rotated his shoulders as he walked stiffly into the hospital to check on his friends, but somehow, he knew they were going to be alright. He hated to admit that in one of his dreams of the six fingered man, Juliet's gun had appeared in his hand instead of a sword and Yin replaced the moustached man but as his eyes were assaulted by the bright emergency department lights, Lassiter caught his eye as if he could see right through him.

"Guster, Shawn tells me you need to be checked for smoke inhalation damage," Carlton said, standing up and guiding the young man to the nurse's station even as Gus tried to walk the other way. "Care to explain just what in the name of baby Jesus you were doing all night?"

Gus peaked into the curtained-off cubicles as he was led to a bed. His friends were going to be okay. He was going to be okay too.

In between questions from a doctor as his blood pressure was taken, Carlton inserted questions of his own.

"Highway camera's on off ramps have that limo heading toward Los Angeles before we lost surveillance. Care to tell us where you were tonight, Guster?" Carlton asked, but Gus noticed that the lanky detective looked too tired to take notes and in fact wasn't making any record at all. Juliet's soft voice asked similar questions of Shawn from somewhere next door but no one seemed to want any real answers and Chief Vick eventually ordered a halt to questioning amid rather annoyed declarations about a tow truck driver somehow losing the illegally parked limo that had been outside only five minutes before.

To Shawn's annoyance, he was readmitted with Buzz who had indeed rebroken two ribs from swinging the axe. Lassiter resigned himself to reading aloud from The Princess Bride. Nothing would be answered tonight anyway and a healthy dose of make believe helped both patients and their visitors who weren't going anywhere. A nurse who'd tried to persuade Gus to go home for rest brought a cot in to Shawn and Buzz's room. Gus settled in begrudgingly stating that a chair would have been fine. Henry and Juliet carried in hot chocolate from a vending machine down the hall and even though it was rather watery and gritty, everyone sipped to avoid conversation, but the story was soothing.

Shawn closed his eyes and felt Juliet's warm hand on his shoulder as he pretended to sleep.

_Please let it be over so the pain stops _

By Thursday morning, Madame Tussade's had cancelled the Yin Yang exhibit without issuing a formal statement and though no one said anything, just how far reaching Despereaux's hands were, was a question on every mind.

XXXXXXXX

Francine sat on the side of Buzz's bed her hand encased in his much larger one.

"Chief Vick fixed things so that the insurance covered everything at the apartment but the landlord still wants us out because of all the - well – stuff, but we got our deposit back," Francine announced happily. "And Buzzy, you won't believe it, I won a contest. I identified a statue of David correctly on an animal rescue charity ballot in the lobby of our veterinarian's office and honey – we have a down payment for a house and the vet bills are paid and Our Little _Girl _Cat is home safe and sound too." Francine gave a friendly smirk at Shawn who'd insisted the cat was a boy when he'd bestowed the animal to Buzz who'd needed a friend.

Things were clicking into place a little too quickly to be the result of merely expedited paperwork and the Statue of David contest just happening to take place at The McNabb's Vet's office? That had to be the work of Pierre Despereaux, International Man of Leisure and apparently, philanthropist. Shawn's eyes were sore from yet more eye tests, but he stole glances at Juliet who looked so happy for the McNabbs.

"Shawn here is coming home on Thursday," Henry said, trying to sound like his son's presence at his home would be irritating but failing. "I have a dentist appointment and a liaison meeting that day. Say, Juliet, that's your day off, isn't it?"

"Um, yeah, listen, Mr. Spenser, I can swing by and check on Shawn any time. No problem."

Henry smiled.

The _No problem _currently fighting sleep in his propped-up bed felt peace that had been absent for such a long time.

Even Shawn's thoughts whispered in his head because everything, even thoughts, were just too loud right now. _Please just let this be over._

Yang's voice whispered to no one in the room but Shawn…

As you wish…

XXXXXXXXXXX

The end.

A/N This marks the end of the story as I'd originally written it so I have marked it as complete on the site but I will be adding a humorous epilogue very soon and hope you will check that out. I have appreciated the reviews, favorites and follows very much, they were uplifting and encouraging. I know my story isn't reaching the creators or cast of Psych but I hope they know what a gift that show is. Again, thanks sharing your time with me in reading or reviewing and I hope you are well and safe and being excellent to each other.


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